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THE WRITINGS OF 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES 
VOLUME III. 










THE POET 

AT 

THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 


|)e talks tottl) Ins iFdlotU'^oarUcrs 
anU tlje Heaton 


BY 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

V\ 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
2T6e fittiers'tbe Cambrtbge 


MDCCCC 





XWo copies receive!" 



Ubrary C f w*#, 

Offte* of tht 




JUN 4~ 1900 


Register of Copyrights 


O . /2.p3 P 


FI **T COPY, 9dt£Ly /P 0-0 



Copyright, 1872 and 1891, 

By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

Copyright, 1900, 

By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
All rights reserved. 


The Riverside Press , Cambridge , Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by II. O. Houghton & Co. 


PREFACE. 


In this, the third series of Breakfast-Table conver¬ 
sations, a slight dramatic background shows off a few 
talkers and writers, aided by certain silent supernu¬ 
meraries. The machinery is much like that of the two 
preceding series. Some of the characters must seem 
like old acquaintances to those who have read the 
former papers. As I read these over for the first 
time for a number of years, I notice one character 
representing a class of beings who have greatly mul¬ 
tiplied during the interval which separates the earlier 
and later Breakfast-Table papers, — I mean the scien¬ 
tific specialists. The entomologist, who confines 
himself rigidly to the study of the coleoptera, is in¬ 
tended to typify this class. The subdivision of labor, 
which, as we used to be told, required fourteen differ¬ 
ent workmen to make a single pin, has reached all 
branches of knowledge. We find new terms in all the 
professions, implying that special provinces have been 
marked off, each having its own school of students. 
In theology we have many curious subdivisions; 
among the rest eschatology, that is to say, the geogra¬ 
phy, geology, etc., of the “undiscovered country; ” 
in medicine, if the surgeon who deals with dislocations 
of the right shoulder declines to meddle with a dis¬ 
placement on the other side, we are not surprised, but 





Vi PREFACE. 

ring the bell of the practitioner who devotes himself 
to injuries of the left shoulder. 

On the other hand, we have had or have the ency¬ 
clopaedic intelligences like Cuvier, Buckle, and more 
emphatically Herbert Spencer, who take all know¬ 
ledge, or large fields of it, to be their province. The 
author of “Thoughts on the Universe” has something 
in common with these, but he appears also to have a 
good deal about him of what we call the humorist; 
that is, an individual with a somewhat heterogeneous 
personality, in which various distinctly human ele¬ 
ments are mixed together, so as to form a kind of 
coherent and sometimes pleasing whole, which is to a 
symmetrical character as a breccia is to a mosaic. 

As for the Young Astronomer, his rhythmical dis¬ 
course may be taken as expressing the reaction of 
what some would call “the natural man” against the 
unnatural beliefs which he found in that lower world 
to which he descended by day from his midnight home 
in the firmament. 

I have endeavored to give fair play to the protest 
of gentle and reverential conservatism in the letter of 
the Lady, which was not copied from, but suggested 
by, one which I received long ago from a lady bear¬ 
ing an honored name, and which I read thoughtfully 
and with profound respect. 

December , 1882. 




PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. 


It is now nearly twenty years since this book was 
published. Being the third of the Breakfast-Table 
series, it could hardly be expected to attract so much 
attention as the earlier volumes. Still, I had no rea¬ 
son to be disappointed with its reception. It took its 
place with the others, and was in some points a clearer 
exposition of my views and feelings than either of the 
other books, its predecessors. The poems “Homesick 
in Heaven ” and the longer group of passages coming 
from the midnight reveries of the Young Astronomer 
have thoughts in them not so fully expressed elsewhere 
in my writings. 

The first of these two poems is at war with our com¬ 
mon modes of thought. In looking forward to re¬ 
joining in a future state those whom we have loved on 
earth, — as most of us hope and many of us believe 
we shall, — we are apt to forget that the same individ¬ 
uality is remembered by one relative as a babe, by 
another as an adult in the strength of maturity, and 
by a third as a wreck with little left except its infirm¬ 
ities and its affections. The main thought of this 
poem is a painful one to some persons. They have 
so closely associated life with its accidents that they 
expect to see their departed friends in the costume of 
the time in which they best remember them, and feel 



viii PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. 

as if they should meet the spirit of their grandfather 
with his wig and cane, as they habitually recall him 
to memory. 

The process of scientific specialization referred to 
and illustrated in this record has been going on more 
actively than ever during these last twenty years. 
We have only to look over the lists of the Faculties 
and teachers of our Universities to see the subdivision 
of labor carried out as never before. The movement 
is irresistible; it brings with it exactness, exhaustive 
knowledge, a narrow but complete self-satisfaction, 
with such accompanying faults as pedantry, triviality, 
and the kind of partial blindness which belong to in¬ 
tellectual myopia. The specialist is idealized almost 
into sublimity in Browning’s “Burial of the Gramma¬ 
rian.” We never need fear that he will undervalue 
himself. To be the supreme authority on anything is 
a satisfaction to self-love next door to the precious de¬ 
lusions of dementia. I have never pictured a charac¬ 
ter more contented with himself than the “Scarabee ” 
of this story. 

O. W. H. 

Beverly Farms, Mass., August 1, 1891. 


THE POET 


AT THE 

BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


I. 


The idea of a man’s “interviewing” himself is 
rather odd, to be sure. But then that is what we are 
all of us doing every day. I talk half the time to 
find out my own thoughts, as a school-boy turns his 
pockets inside out to see what is in them. One brings 
to light all sorts of personal property he had forgot¬ 
ten in his inventory. 

— You don’t know what your thoughts are goingto 
be beforehand? said the “Member of the Haouse,” as 
he calls himself. 

— Why, of course I don’t. Bless your honest leg¬ 
islative soid, I suppose I have as many bound volumes 
of notions of one kind and another in my head as you 
have in your Representatives’ library up there at the 
State House. I have to tumble them over and over, 
and open them in a hundred places, and sometimes 
cut the leaves here and there, to find what I think 
about this and that. And a good many people who 
flatter themselves they are talking wisdom to me, are 
only helping me to get at the shelf and the book and 
the page where I shall find my own opinion about 
the matter in question. 



2 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— The Member’s eyes began to look heavy. 

— It ’s a very queer place, that receptacle a man 
fetches his talk out of. The library comparison 
does n’t exactly hit it. You stow away some idea and 
don’t want it, say for ten years. When it turns up 
at last it has got so jammed and crushed out of shape 
by the other ideas packed with it, that it is no more 
like what it was than a raisin is like a grape on the 
vine, or a fig from a drum like one hanging on the 
tree. Then, again, some kinds of thoughts breed in 
the dark of one’s mind like the blind fishes in the 
Mammoth Cave. We can’t see them and they can’t 
see us; but sooner or later the daylight gets in and 
we find that some cold, fishy little negative has been 
spawning all over our beliefs, and the brood of blind 
questions it has given birth to are burrowing round 
and under and butting their blunt noses against the 
pillars of faith we thought the whole world might lean 
on. And then, again, some of our old beliefs are 
dying out every year, and others feed on them and 
grow fat, or get poisoned as the case may be. And 
so, you see, you can’t tell what the thoughts are that 
you have got salted down, as one may say, till you 
run a streak of talk through them, as the market peo¬ 
ple run a butter-scoop through a firkin. 

Don’t talk, thinking you are going to find out your 
neighbor, for you won’t do it, but talk to find out 
yourself. There is more of you — and less of you, in 
spots, very likely — than you know. 

— The Member gave a slight but unequivocal start 
just here. It does seem as if perpetual somnolence 
was the price of listening to other people’s wisdom. 
This was one of those transient nightmares that one 
may have in a doze of twenty seconds. He thought a 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


3 


certain imaginary Committee of Safety of a certain 
imaginary Legislature was proceeding to burn down 
his haystack, in accordance with an Act, entitled an 
Act to make the Poor Richer by making the Rich 
Poorer. And the chairman of the committee was in¬ 
stituting a forcible exchange of hats with him, to his 
manifest disadvantage, for he had just bought him a 
new beaver. He told this dream afterwards to one of 
the boarders. 

There was nothing very surprising, therefore, in his 
asking a question not very closely related to what had 
gone before. 

— Do you think they mean business? 

— I beg your pardon, but it would be of material 
assistance to me in answering your question if I knew 
who “they” might happen to be. 

— Why, those chaps that are setting folks on to 
burn us all up in our beds. Political firebugs we call 
’em up our way. Want to substitoot the match-box 
for the ballot-box. Scare all our old women half to 
death. 

— Oh — ah — yes — to be sure. I don’t believe 
they say what the papers put in their mouths any 
more than that a friend of mine wrote the letter about 
Worcester’s and Webster’s Dictionaries, that he had 
to disown the other day. These newspaper fellows 
are half asleep when they make up their reports at two 
or three o’clock in the morning, and fill out the 
speeches to suit themselves. I do remember some 
things that sounded pretty bad, — about as bad as 
nitro-glycerine, for that matter. But I don’t believe 
they ever said ’em, when they spoke their pieces, or 
if they said ’em I know they didn’t mean ’em. 
Something like this, was n’t it? If the majority 


4 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

didn’t do something the minority wanted ’em to, then 
the people were to burn up our cities, and knock us 
down and jump on our stomachs. That was about 
the kind of talk, as the papers had it; I don’t wonder 
it scared the old women. 

— The Member was wide awake by this time. 

— I don’t seem to remember of them partickler 
phrases, he said. 

— Dear me, no; only levelling everything smack, 
and trampling us under foot, as the reporters made it 
out. That means fire, I take it, and knocking you 
down and stamping on you, whichever side of your 
person happens to be uppermost. Sounded like a 
threat; meant, of course, for a warning. But I don’t 
believe it was in the piece as they spoke it, — could n’t 
have been. Then, again, Paris was n’t to blame, — 
as much as to say — so the old women thought — that 
New York or Boston would n’t be to blame if it did the 
same thing. I ’ve heard of political gatherings where 
they barbecued an ox, but I can’t think there’s a 
party in this country that wants to barbecue a city. 
But it is n’t quite fair to frighten the old women. I 
don’t doubt there are a great many people wiser than 
I am that would n’t be hurt by a hint I am going to 
give them. It’s no matter what you say when you 
talk to yourself, but when you talk to other people, 
your business is to use words with reference to the 
way in which those other people are like to understand 
them. These pretended inflammatory speeches, so 
reported as to seem full of combustibles, even if they 
were as threatening as they have been represented, 
would do no harm if read or declaimed in a man’s 
study to his books, or by the sea-shore to the waves. 
But they are not so wholesome moral entertainment 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 5 

for the dangerous classes. Boys must not touch off 
their squibs and crackers too near the powder-maga¬ 
zine. This kind of speech does n’t help on the millen¬ 
nium much. 

— It ain’t jest the thing to grease your ex with ile 
o’ vitrul, said the Member. 

— No, the wheel of progress will soon stick fast if 
you do. You can’t keep a dead level long, if you 
burn everything down flat to make it. Why, bless 
your soul, if all the cities of the world were reduced 
to ashes, you’d have a new set of millionnaires in a 
couple of years or so, out of the trade in potash. In 
the mean time, what is the use of setting the man with 
the silver watch against the man with the gold watch, 
and the man without any watch against them both? 

— You can’t go agin human natur’, said the Mem¬ 
ber. 

— You speak truly. Here we are travelling through 
the desert together like the children of Israel. Some 
pick up more manna and catch more quails than oth¬ 
ers, and ought to help their hungry neighbors more 
than they do; that will always be so until we come 
back to primitive Christianity, the road to which does 
not seem to be via Paris, just now; but we don’t 
want the incendiary’s pillar of a cloud by day and a 
pillar of fire by night to lead us in the march to civil¬ 
ization, and we don’t want a Moses who will smite 
the rock, not to bring out water for our thirst, but 
petroleum to burn us all up with. 

— It isn’t quite fair to run an opposition to the 
other funny speaker, Rev. Petroleum Y. What ’s-his- 
name, — spoke up an anonymous boarder. 

— You may have been thinking, perhaps, that it 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


was I, — I, the Poet, who was the chief talker in the 
one-sided dialogue to which you have been listening. 
If so, you were mistaken. It was the old man in the 
spectacles with large round glasses and the iron-gray 
hair. He does a good deal of the talking at our table, 
and, to tell the truth, I rather like to hear him. He 
stirs me up, and finds me occupation in various ways, 
and especially, because he has good solid prejudices, 
that one can rub against, and so get up and let off a 
superficial intellectual irritation, just as the cattle rub 
their backs against a rail (you remember Sydney 
Smith’s contrivance in his pasture) or their sides 
against an apple-tree (I don’t know why they take to 
these so particularly, but you will often find the trunk 
of an apple-tree as brown and smooth as an old saddle 
at the height of a cow’s ribs). I think they begin 
rubbing in cold blood, and then, you know, V appetit 
merit en mangeant , the more they rub the more they 
want to. That is the way to use your friend’s preju¬ 
dices. This is a sturdy-looking personage of a good 
deal more than middle age, his face marked with 
strong manly furrows, records of hard thinking and 
square stand-up fights with life and all its devils. 
There is a slight touch of satire in his discourse now 
and then, and an odd way of answering one that 
makes it hard to guess how much more or less he 
means than he seems to say. But he is honest, and 
always has a twinkle in his eye to put you on your 
guard when he does not mean to be taken quite liter¬ 
ally. I think old Ben Franklin had just that look. 
I know his great-grandson (in pace!) had it, and I 
don’t doubt he took it in the straight line of descent, 
as he did his grand intellect. 

The Member of the Haouse evidently comes from 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


7 


one of the lesser inland centres of civilization, where 
the flora is rich in checkerberries and similar bounties 
of nature, and the fauna lively with squirrels, wood¬ 
chucks, and the like; where the leading sportsmen 
snare patridges, as they are called, and “hunt” foxes 
with guns; where rabbits are entrapped in “figgery 
fours,” and trout captured with the unpretentious 
earth-worm, instead of the gorgeous fly; where they 
get prizes for butter and cheese, and rag-carpets exe¬ 
cuted by ladies more than seventy years of age; where 
they wear dress-coats before dinner, and cock their 
hats on one side when they feel conspicuous and distin¬ 
guished ; where they say Sir to you in their common 
talk, and have other Arcadian and bucolic ways which 
are highly unobjectionable, but are not so much ad¬ 
mired in cities, where the people are said to be not 
half so virtuous. 

There is with us a boy of modest dimensions, not 
otherwise especially entitled to the epithet, who ought 
to be six or seven years old, to judge by the gap left 
by his front milk teeth, these having resigned in favor 
of their successors, who have not yet presented their 
credentials. He is rather old for an enfant terrible , 
and quite too young to have grown into the bashful¬ 
ness of adolescence; but he has some of the qualities 
of both these engaging periods of development. The 
Member of the Haouse calls him “Bub,” invariably, 
which term I take to be an abbreviation of “Beelze¬ 
bub,” as “’bus” is the short form of “omnibus.” 
Many eminently genteel persons, whose manners make 
them at home anywhere, being evidently unaware of 
the true derivation of this word, are in the habit of 
addressing all unknown children by one of the two 
terms, “bub” and “sis,” which they consider endears 


8 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

them greatly to the young people, and recommends 
them to the acquaintance of their honored parents, if 
these happen to accompany them* The other board¬ 
ers commonly call our diminutive companion That 
Boy. He is a sort of expletive at the table, serving 
to stop gaps, taking the same place a washer does that 
makes a loose screw fit, and contriving to get driven 
in like a wedge between any two chairs where there is 
a crevice. I shall not call that boy by the monosylla¬ 
ble referred to, because, though he has many impish 
traits at present, he may become civilized and human¬ 
ized by being in good company. Besides, it is a term 
which I understand is considered vulgar by the nobil¬ 
ity and gentry of the Mother Country, and it is not 
to be found in Mr. Worcester’s Dictionary, on which, 
as is well known, the literary men of this metropolis 
are by special statute allowed to be sworn in place of 
the Bible. I know one, certainly, who never takes 
his oath on any other dictionary, any advertising fic¬ 
tion to the contrary, notwithstanding. 

I wanted to write out my account of some of the 
other boarders, but a domestic occurrence — a some¬ 
what prolonged visit from the landlady, who is rather 
too anxious that I should be comfortable — broke in 
upon the continuity of my thoughts, and occasioned 
— in short, I gave up writing for that day. 

— I wonder if anything like this ever happened. 

Author writing, — 

“ To be, or not to be: that is the question : — 
Whether’t is nobl —” 

t 

— “William, shall we have pudding to-day, or flap- 
jacks?” 

— “ Flapjacks, an’ it please thee, Anne, or a pud- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 9 

ding, for tliat matter; or what thou wilt, good woman, 
so thou come not betwixt me and my thought.” 

— Exit Mistress Anne, with strongly accented clos¬ 
ing of the door and murmurs to the effect: “Ay, 
marry, ’t is well for thee to talk as if thou hadst no 
stomach to fill. We poor wives must swink for our 
masters, while they sit in their arm-chairs growing as 
great in the girth through laziness as that ill-mannered 
old fat man William hath writ of in his books of play¬ 
ers’ stuff. One had as well meddle with a porkpen, 
which hath thorns all over him, as try to deal with 
William when his eyes be rolling in that mad way.” 

William — writing once more — after an exclama¬ 
tion in strong English of the older pattern, — 

“ Whether’t is nobler — nobler — nobler — 

To do what ? O these women! these women! to have 
puddings or flapjacks! Oh! — 

Whether ’t is nobler — in the mind — to suffer 
The slings — and arrows — of — 

Oh! Oh! these women! I will e’en step over to 
the parson’s and have a cup of sack with His Rever¬ 
ence, for methinks Master Hamlet hath forgot that 
which was just now on his lips to speak.” 

So I shall have to put off making my friends ac¬ 
quainted with the other boarders, some of whom seem 
to me worth studying and describing. I have some¬ 
thing else of a graver character for my readers. I am 
talking, you know, as a poet; I do not say I deserve 
the name, but I have taken it, and if you consider me 
at all it must be in that aspect. You will, therefore, 
perhaps, be willing to run your eyes over a few pages 
which I read, of course by request, to a select party of 
the boarders. 


10 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


THE GAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE AND ITS 
OUTLOOK. 

A PANORAMA, WITH SIDE-SHOWS. 

My birthplace, the home of my childhood and ear¬ 
lier and later boyhood, has within a few months 
passed out of the ownership of my family into the 
hands of that venerable Alma Mater who seems to 
have renewed her youth, and has certainly repainted 
her dormitories. In truth, when I last revisited that 
familiar scene and looked upon the Jlammantia moenia 
of the old halls, “Massachusetts” with the dummy 
clock-dial, “Harvard” with the garrulous belfry, lit¬ 
tle “Holden ” with the sculptured unpunishable cherub 
over its portal, and the rest of my early brick-and- 
mortar acquaintances, I could not help saying to my¬ 
self that I had lived to see the peaceable establishment 
of the Red Republic of Letters. 

Many of the things I shall put down I have no 
doubt told before in a fragmentary way, how many 
I cannot be quite sure, as I do not very often read my 
own prose works. But when a man dies a great deal 
is said of him which has often been said in other 
forms, and now this dear old house is dead to me in 
one sense, and I want to gather up my recollections 
and wind a string of narrative round them, tying them 
up like a nosegay for the last tribute: the same blos¬ 
soms in it I have often laid on its threshold while it 
was still living for me. 

We Americans are all cuckoos,—we make our 
homes in the nests of other birds. I have read some¬ 
where that the lineal descendants of the man who 
carted off the body of William Rufus, with Walter 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 11 

Tyrrel’s arrow sticking in it, have driven a cart (not 
absolutely the same one, I suppose) in the New Forest, 
from that day to this. I don’t quite understand Mr. 
Ruskin’s saying (if he said it) that he couldn’t get 
along in a country where there were no castles, but I 
do think we lose a great deal in living where there 
are so few permanent homes. You will see how much 
I parted with which was not reckoned in the price 
paid for the old homestead. 

I shall say many things which an uncharitable 
reader might find fault with as personal. I should 
not dare to call myself a poet if I did not; for if 
there is anything that gives one a title to that name, 
it is that his inner nature is naked and is not ashamed. 
But there are many such things I shall put in words, 
not because they are personal, but because they are 
human, and are born of just such experiences as those 
who hear or read what I say are like to have had in 
greater or less measure. I find myself so much like 
other people that I often wonder at the coincidence. 
It was only the other day that I sent out a copy of 
verses about my great-grandmother’s picture, and I 
was surprised to find how many other people had 
portraits of their great-grandmothers or other progen¬ 
itors, about which they felt as I did about mine, and 
for whom I had spoken, thinking I was speaking for 
myself only. And so I am not afraid to talk very 
freely with you, my precious reader or listener. You 
too, Beloved, were born somewhere and remember 
your birthplace or your early home; for you some 
house is haunted by recollections; to some roof you 
have bid farewell. Your hand is upon mine, then, as 
I guide my pen. Your heart frames the responses to 
the litany of my remembrance. For myself it is a 


12 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

tribute of affection I am rendering, and I should put 
it on record for my own satisfaction, were there none 
to read or to listen. 

I hope you will not say that I have built a pillared 
portico of introduction to a humble structure of nar¬ 
rative. For when you look at the old gambrel-roofed 
house, you will see an unpretending mansion, such as 
very possibly you were born in yourself, or at any 
rate such a place of residence as your minister or some 
of your well-to-do country cousins find good enough, 
but not'at all too grand for them. We have stately 
old Colonial palaces in our ancient village, now a 
city, and a thriving one, — square-fronted edifices that 
stand back from the vulgar highway, with folded 
arms, as it were; social fortresses of the time when 
the twilight lustre of the throne reached as far as our 
half-cleared settlement, with a glacis before them in 
the shape of a long broad gravel-walk, so that in King 
George’s time they looked as formidably to any but 
the silk-stocking gentry as Gibraltar or Ehrenbreit- 
stein to a visitor without the password. We forget 
all this in the kindly welcome they give us to-day; 
for some of them are still standing and doubly famous, 
as we all know. But the gambrel-roofed house, 
though stately enough for college dignitaries and schol¬ 
arly clergymen, was not one of those old Tory, Epis¬ 
copal-church-goer’s strongholds. One of its doors 
opens directly upon the green, always called the Com¬ 
mon; the other, facing the south, a few steps from it, 
over a paved foot-walk, on the other side of which is 
the miniature front yard, bordered with lilacs and 
syringas. The honest mansion makes no pretensions. 
Accessible, companionable, holding its hand out to 
all, comfortable, respectable, and even in its way dig- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 13 

nified, but not imposing, not a house for his Majesty’s 
Counsellor, or the Right Reverend successor of Him 
who had not where to lay his head, for something like 
a hundred and fifty years it has stood in its lot, and 
seen the generations of men come and go like the 
leaves of the forest. I passed some pleasant hours, 
a few years since, in the Registry of Deeds and the 
Town Records looking up the history of the old house. 
How those dear friends of mine, the antiquarians, for 
whose grave councils I compose my features on the too 
rare Thursdays when I am at liberty to meet them, in 
whose human herbariiun the leaves and blossoms of 
past generations are so carefully spread out and pressed 
and laid away, would listen to an expansion of the 
following brief details into an Historical Memoir! 

The estate was the third lot of the eighth “ Squad¬ 
ron” (whatever that might be), and in the year 1707 
was allotted in the distribution of undivided lands to 
“Mr. ffox,” the Reverend Jabez Fox of Woburn, it 
may be supposed, as it passed from his heirs to the 
first Jonathan Hastings; from him to his son, the long- 
remembered College Steward; from him in the year 
1792 to the Reverend Eliplialet Pearson, Professor 
of Hebrew and other Oriental languages in Harvard 
College, whose large personality swam into my ken 
when I was looking forward to my teens; from him 
to the progenitors of my unborn self. 

I wonder if there are any such beings nowadays as 
the great Eliphalet, with his large features and con¬ 
versational basso profundo , seemed to me. His very 
name had something elephantine about it, and it 
seemed to me that the house shook from cellar to gar¬ 
ret at his footfall. Some have pretended that he had 
Olympian aspirations, and wanted to sit in the seat of 


14 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Jove and bear the academic thunderbolt and the aegis 
inscribed Christo et Ecclesice. It is a common weak¬ 
ness enough to wish to find one’s self in an empty sad¬ 
dle ; Cotton Mather was miserable all his days, I am 
afraid, after that entry in his Diary: “This Day Dr. 
Sewall was chosen President, for his Piety.” 

There is no doubt that the men of the older gener¬ 
ation look bigger and more formidable to the boys 
whose eyes are turned up at their venerable counte¬ 
nances than the race which succeeds them, to the same 
boys grown older. Everything is twice as large, mea¬ 
sured on a three-year-old’s three-foot scale as on a 
thirty-year-old’s six-foot scale; but age magnifies and 
aggravates persons out of due proportion. Old peo¬ 
ple are a kind of monsters to little folks; mild mani¬ 
festations of the terrible, it may be, but still, with 
their white locks and ridged and grooved features, 
which those horrid little eyes exhaust of their details, 
like so many microscopes not exactly what human 
beings ought to be. The middle-aged and young 
men have left comparatively faint impressions in my 
memory, but how grandly the procession of the old 
clergymen who filled our pulpit from time to time, 
and passed the day under our roof, marches before my 
closed eyes! At their head the most venerable David 
Osgood, the majestic minister of Medford, with mas¬ 
sive front and shaggy over-shadowing eyebrows; fol¬ 
lowing in the train, mild-eyed John Foster of Brigh¬ 
ton, with the lambent aurora of a smile about his 
pleasant mouth, which not even the “Sabbath” could 
subdue to the true Levitical aspect; and bulky 
Charles Stearns of Lincoln, author of “The Ladies’ 
Philosophy of Love. A Poem. 1797 ” (how I stared 
at him! he was the first living person ever pointed out 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 15 

to me as a poet); and Thaddeus Mason Harris of 
Dorchester (the same who, a poor youth, trudging 
along, staff in hand, being then in a stress of sore 
need, found all at once that somewhat was adhering to 
the end of his stick, which somewhat proved to he a 
gold ring of price, bearing the words, “God speed 
thee, Friend! ”), already in decadence as I remember 
him, with head slanting forward and downward as 
if looking for a place to rest in after his learned la¬ 
bors ; and that other Thaddeus, the old man of West 
Cambridge, who outwatched the rest so long after they 
had gone to sleep in their own churchyards, that it al¬ 
most seemed as if he meant to sit up until the morning 
of the resurrection; and bringing up the rear, atten¬ 
uated but vivacious little Jonathan Homer of Newton, 
who was, to look upon, a kind of expurgated, reduced 
and Americanized copy of Voltaire, but very unlike 
him in wickedness or wit. The good-humored junior 
member of our family always loved to make him happy 
by setting him chirruping about Miles Coverdale’s 
Version, and the Bishop’s Bible, and how he wrote to 
his friend Sir Isaac (Coffin) about something or other, 
and how Sir Isaac wrote back that he was very much 
pleased with the contents of his letter, and so on 
about Sir Isaac, ad libitum , — for the admiral was his 
old friend, and he was proud of him. The kindly lit¬ 
tle old gentleman was a collector of Bibles, and made 
himself believe he thought he should publish a learned 
Commentary some day or other; but his friends 
looked for it only in the Greek Calends, — say on the 
31st of April, when that should come round, if you 
would modernize the phrase. I recall also one or two 
exceptional and infrequent visitors with perfect dis¬ 
tinctness: cheerful Elijah Kellogg, a lively missionary 


16 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

from the region of the Quoddy Indians, with much 
hopeful talk about Sock Bason and his tribe; also 
poor old Poor-house-Parson Isaac Smith, his head 
going like a China mandarin, as he discussed the pos¬ 
sibilities of the escape of that distinguished captive 
whom he spoke of under the name, if I can reproduce 
phonetically its vibrating nasalities of “General 
Mmbongaparty,” — a name suggestive to my young 
imagination of a dangerous, loose-jointed skeleton, 
threatening us all like the armed figure of Death in 
my little New England Primer. 

I have mentioned only the names of those whose 
images come up pleasantly before me, and I do not 
mean to say anything which any descendant might not 
read smilingly. But there were some of the black- 
coated gentry whose aspect was not so agreeable to 
me. It is very curious to me to look back on my 
early likes and dislikes, and see how as a child I was 
attracted or repelled by such and such ministers, a 
good deal, as I found out long afterwards, according 
to their theological beliefs. On the whole, I think the 
old-fashioned New England divine softening down into 
Arminianism was about as agreeable as any of them. 
And here I may remark, that a mellowing rigorist is 
always a much pleasanter object to contemplate than 
a tightening liberal, as a cold day warming up to 32° 
Fahrenheit is much more agreeable than a warm one 
chilling down to the same temperature. The least 
pleasing change is that kind of mental hemiplegia 
which now and then attacks the rational side of a man 
at about the same period of life when one side of the 
body is liable to be palsied, and in fact is, very prob¬ 
ably, the same thing as palsy, in another foym. The 
worst of it is that the subjects of it never seem to sus- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 17 

pect that they are intellectual invalids, stammerers and 
cripples at best, but are all the time hitting out at 
their old friends with the well arm, and calling them 
hard names out of their twisted mouths. 

It was a real delight to have one of those good, 
hearty, happy, benignant old clergymen pass the Sun¬ 
day with us, and I can remember some whose advent 
made the day feel almost like “Thanksgiving.” But 
now and then would come along a clerical visitor with 
a sad face and a wailing voice, which sounded exactly 
as if somebody must be lying dead up stairs, who took 
no interest in us children, except a painful one, as 
being in a bad way with our cheery looks, and did 
more to unchristianize us with his woebegone ways 
than all his sermons were like to accomplish in the 
other direction. I remember one in particular, who 
twitted me so with my blessings as a Christian child, 
and whined so to me about the naked black children 
who, like the “Little Vulgar Boy,” “hadn’t got no 
supper and hadn’t got no ma,” and hadn’t got no 
Catechism, (how I wished for the moment I was a lit¬ 
tle black boy!) that he did more in that one day to 
make me a heathen than he had ever done in a month 
to make a Christian out of an infant Hottentot. 
What a debt we owe to our friends of the left centre, 
the Brooklyn and the Park Street and the Summer 
Street ministers; good, wholesome, sound-bodied, 
sane-minded, cheerful-spirited men, who have taken 
the place of those wailing poitrinaires with the ban¬ 
danna handkerchiefs round their meagre throats and 
a funeral service in their forlorn physiognomies! I 
might have been a minister myself, for aught I know, 
if this clergyman had not looked and talked so like an 
undertaker. 


18 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

All this belongs to one of the side-shows, to which 
I promised those who would take tickets to the main 
exhibition should have entrance gratis . If I were 
writing a poem you would expect, as a matter of 
course, that there would be a digression now and then. 

To come back to the old house and its former 
tenant, the Professor of Hebrew and other Oriental 
languages. Fifteen years he lived with his family un¬ 
der its roof. I never found the slightest trace of him 
until a few years ago, when I cleaned and brightened 
with pious hands the brass lock of “the study,” which 
had for many years been covered with a thick coat of 
paint. On that I found scratched, as with a nail or 
fork, the following inscription: — 

E PE 

Only that and nothing more, but the story told it¬ 
self. Master Edward Pearson, then about as high as 
the lock, was disposed to immortalize himself in mon¬ 
umental brass, and had got so far towards it, when 
a sudden interruption, probably a smart box on the 
ear, cheated him of his fame, except so far as this 
poor record may rescue it. Dead long ago. I remem¬ 
ber him well, a grown man, as a visitor at a later 
period; and, for some reason, I recall him in the atti¬ 
tude of the Colossus of Rhodes, standing full before 
a generous wood-fire, not facing it, but quite the con¬ 
trary, a perfect picture of the content afforded by a 
blazing hearth contemplated from that point of view, 
and, as the heat stole through his person and kindled 
his emphatic features, seeming to me a pattern of 
manly beauty. What a statue gallery of posturing 
friends we all have in our memory! The old Profes¬ 
sor himself sometimes visited the house after it had 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 19 

changed hands. Of course, my recollections are not to 
be wholly trusted, but I always think I see his likeness 
in a profile face to be found among the illustrations of 
Rees’s Cyclopsedia. (See Plates, Vol. IV., Plate 2, 
Painting, Diversities of the Human Face, Fig. 4.) 

And now let us return to our chief picture. In the 
days of my earliest remembrance, a row of tall Lom¬ 
bardy poplars mounted guard on the western side of 
the old mansion. Whether, like the cypress, these 
trees suggest the idea of the funeral torch or the mon¬ 
umental spire, whether their tremulous leaves make 
us afraid by sympathy with their nervous thrills, 
whether the faint balsamic smell of their foliage and 
their closely swathed limbs have in them vague hints 
of dead Pharaohs stiffened in their cerements, I will 
not guess; but they always seemed to me to give an 
air of sepulchral sadness to the house before which 
they stood sentries. Not so with the row of elms 
which you may see leading up towards the western en¬ 
trance. I think the patriarch of them all went over 
in the great gale of 1815; I know I used to shake the 
youngest of them with my hands, stout as it is now, 
with a trunk that would defy the bully of Crotona, or 
the strong man whose liaison with the Lady Delilah 
proved so disastrous. 

The College plain would be nothing without its 
elms. As the long hair of a woman is a glory to her, 
so are these green tresses that bank themselves against 
the sky in thick clustered masses the ornament and the 
pride of the classic green. You know the “Washing¬ 
ton elm,” or if you do not, you had better rekindle 
your patriotism by reading the inscription, which tells 
you that under its shadow the great leader first drew 
his sword at the head of an American army. In a 


20 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

line with that you may see two others: the coral fan , 
as I always called it from its resemblance in form to 
that beautiful marine growth, and a third a little far¬ 
ther along. I have heard it said that all three were 
planted at the same time, and that the difference of 
their growth is due to the slope of the ground, — the 
Washington elm being lower than either of the others. 
There is a row of elms just in front of the old house 
on the south. When I was a child the one at the 
southwest corner was struck by lightning, and one of 
its limbs and a long ribbon of bark torn away. The 
tree never fully recovered its symmetry and vigor, 
and forty years and more afterwards a second thunder¬ 
bolt crashed upon.it and set its heart on fire, like those 
of the lost souls in the Hall of Eblis. Heaven had 
twice blasted it, and the axe finished what the light¬ 
ning had begun. 

The soil of the University town is divided into 
patches of sandy and of clayey ground. The Com¬ 
mon and the College green, near which the old house 
stands, are on one of the sandy patches. Four curses 
are the local inheritance: droughts, dust, mud, and 
canker-worms. I cannot but think that all the char¬ 
acters of a region help to modify the children born in 
it. I am fond of making apologies for human nature, 
and I think I could find an excuse for myself if I, too, 
were dry and barren and muddy-witted and “cantan¬ 
kerous,”— disposed to get my back up, like those 
other natives of the soil. 

I know this, that the way Mother Earth treats a boy 
shapes out a kind of natural theology for him. I fell 
into Manichean ways of thinking from the teaching of 
my garden experiences. Like other boys in the coun¬ 
try, I had my patch of ground, to which, in the spring- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 21 

time, I entrusted the seeds furnished me, with a con¬ 
fident trust in their resurrection and glorification in 
the better world of summer. But I soon found that 
my lines had fallen in a place where a vegetable 
growth had to run the gauntlet of as many foes and 
trials as a Christian pilgrim. Flowers would not 
blow; daffodils perished like criminals in their con¬ 
demned caps, without their petals ever seeing daylight; 
roses were disfigured with monstrous protrusions 
through their very centres, — something that looked 
like a second bud pushing through the middle of the 
corolla; lettuces and cabbages would not head; rad¬ 
ishes knotted themselves until they looked like cente¬ 
narians’ fingers; and on every stem, on every leaf, and 
both sides of it, and at the root of everything that 
grew, was a professional specialist in the shape of 
grub, caterpillar, aphis, or other expert, whose busi¬ 
ness it was to devour that particular part, and help 
murder the whole attempt at vegetation. Such expe¬ 
riences must influence a child born to them. A sandy 
soil, where nothing flourishes but weeds and evil 
beasts of small dimensions, must breed different qual¬ 
ities in its human offspring from one of those fat and 
fertile spots which the wit whom I have once before 
quoted described so happily that, if I quoted the pas¬ 
sage, its brilliancy would spoil one of my pages, as a 
diamond breastpin sometimes kills the social effect of 
the wearer, who might have passed for a gentleman 
without it. Your arid patch of earth should seem to 
be the natural birthplace of the leaner virtues and the 
feebler vices, — of temperance and the domestic pro¬ 
prieties on the one hand, with a tendency to light 
weights in groceries and provisions, and to clandestine 
abstraction from the person on the other, as opposed to 


22 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the free hospitality, the broadly planned burglaries, 
and the largely conceived homicides of our rich West¬ 
ern alluvial regions. Yet Nature is never wholly 
unkind. Economical as she was in my unparadised 
Eden, hard as it was to make some of my floral houris 
unveil, still the damask roses sweetened the June 
breezes, the bladed and plumed flower-de-luces un¬ 
folded their close-wrapped cones, and larkspurs and 
lupins, lady’s delights,—plebeian manifestations of 
the pansy, — self-sowing marigolds, hollyhocks, the 
forest flowers of two seasons, and the perennial lilacs 
and syringas, — all whispered to the winds blowing 
over them that some caressing presence was around 
me. 

Beyond the garden was “the field,” a vast domain 
of four acres or thereabout, by the measurement of 
after years, bordered to the north by a fathomless 
chasm, — the ditch the base-ball players of the present 
era jump over; on the east by unexplored territory; 
on the south by a barren enclosure, where the red 
sorrel proclaimed liberty and equality under its dra - 
peau rouge , and succeeded in establishing a vegetable 
commune where all were alike, poor, mean, sour, and 
uninteresting; and on the west by the Common, not 
then disgraced by jealous enclosures, which make it 
look like a cattle-market. Beyond, as I looked round, 
were the Colleges, the meeting-house, the little square 
market-house, long vanished; the burial-ground where 
the dead Presidents stretched their weary bones un¬ 
der epitaphs stretched out at as full length as their 
subjects; the pretty church where the gouty Tories 
used to kneel on their hassocks; the district school- 
house, and hard by it Ma’am Hancock’s cottage, 
never so called in those days, but rather “tenfooter”; 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 23 

then houses scattered near and far, open spaces, the 
shadowy elms, round hilltops in the distance, and over 
all the great bowl of the sky. Mind you, this was 
the world, as I first knew it; terra veteribus cognita> 
as Mr. Arrowsmith would have called it, if he had 
mapped the universe of my infancy. 

But I am forgetting the old house again in the 
landscape. The worst of a modern stylish mansion 
is, that it has no place for ghosts. I watched one 
building not long since. It had no proper garret, to 
begin with, only a sealed interval between the roof and 
attics, where a spirit could not be accommodated, un¬ 
less it were flattened out like Ravel, Brother, after the 
millstone had fallen on him. There was not a nook 
or a corner in the whole house fit to lodge any respect¬ 
able ghost, for every part was as open to observation 
as a literary man’s character and condition, his figure 
and estate, his coat and his countenance, are to his (or 
her) Bohemian Majesty on a tour of inspection through 
his (or her) subjects’ keyholes. 

Now the old house had wainscots, behind which the 
mice were always scampering and squeaking and rat¬ 
tling down the plaster, and enacting family scenes and 
parlor theatricals. It had a cellar where the cold slug 
clung to the walls, and the misanthropic spider with¬ 
drew from the garish day; where the green mould 
loved to grow, and the long white potato-shoots went 
feeling along the floor, if haply they might find the 
daylight; it had great brick pillars, always in a cold 
sweat with holding up the burden they had been ach¬ 
ing under day and night for a century and more; it 
had sepulchral arches closed by rough doors that hung 
on hinges rotten with rust, behind which doors, if 
there was not a heap of bones connected with a myste- 


24 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


rious disappearance of long ago, there well might have 
been, for it was just the place to look for them. It 
had a garret, very nearly such a one as it seems to me 
one of us has described in one of his books; but let us 
look at this one as I can reproduce it from memory. 
It has a flooring of laths with ridges of mortar squeezed 
up between them, which if you tread on you will go to 

— the Lord have mercy on you! where will you go to ? 

— the same being crossed by narrow bridges of boards, 
on which you may put your feet, but with fear and 
trembling. Above you and around you are beams 
and joists, on some of which you may see, when the 
light is let in, the marks of the conchoidal clippings of 
the broadaxe, showing the rude way in which the tim¬ 
ber was shaped as it came, full of sap, from the neigh¬ 
boring forest. It is a realm of darkness and thick 
dust, and shroud-like cobwebs and dead things they 
wrap in their gray folds. For a garret is like a sea¬ 
shore, where wrecks are thrown up and slowly go to 
pieces. There is the cradle which the old man you 
just remember was rocked in; there is the ruin of the 
bedstead he died on; that ugly slanting contrivance 
used to be put under his pillow in the days when his 
breath came hard; there is his old chair with both 
arms gone, symbol of the desolate time when he had 
nothing earthly left to lean on; there is the large 
wooden reel which the blear-eyed old deacon sent the 
minister’s lady, who thanked him graciously, and 
twirled it smilingly, and in fitting season bowed it out 
decently to the limbo of troublesome conveniences. 
And there are old leather portmanteaus, like stranded 
porpoises, their mouths gaping in gaunt hunger for the 
food with which they used to be gorged to bulging 
repletion; and old brass andirons, waiting until time 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 25 

shall revenge them on their paltry substitutes, and they 
shall have their own again, and bring with them the 
fore-stick and the back-log of ancient days; and the 
empty churn, with its idle dasher, which the Nancys 
and Phoebes, who have left their comfortable places to 
the Bridgets and Norahs, used to handle to good pur¬ 
pose ; and the brown, shaky old spinning-wheel, which 
was running, it may be, in the days when they were 
hanging the Salem witches. 

Under the dark and haunted garret were attic 
chambers which themselves had histories. On a pane 
in the northeastern chamber may be read these names: 
“John Tracy,” “Robert Roberts,” “Thomas Prince ”; 
“ Stultus” another hand had added. When I found 
these names a few years ago (wrong side up, for the 
window had been reversed), I looked at once in the 
Triennial to find them, for the epithet showed that 
they were probably students. I found them all under 
the years 1771 and 1773. Does it please their thin 
ghosts thus to be dragged to the light of day? Has 
“ Stultus ” forgiven the indignity of being thus char¬ 
acterized? 

The southeast chamber was the Library Hospital. 
Every scholar should have a book infirmary attached 
to his library. There should find a peaceable refuge 
the many books, invalids from their birth, which are 
sent “with the best regards of the Author”; the re¬ 
spected, but unpresentable cripples which have lost 
a cover; the odd volumes of honored sets which go 
mourning all their days for their lost brother; the 
school-books which have been so often the subjects of 
assault and battery, that they look as if the police 
court must know them by heart; these and still more 
the pictured story-books, beginning with Mother Goose 


26 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

(which a dear old friend of mine has just been amus¬ 
ing his philosophic leisure with turning most ingen¬ 
iously and happily into the tongues of Virgil and 
Homer), will be precious mementos by and by, when 
children and grandchildren come along. What would 
I not give for that dear little paper-bound quarto, in 
large and most legible type, on certain pages of which 
the tender hand that was the shield of my infancy had 
crossed out with deep black marks something awful, 
probably about Bears, such as once tare two-and- 
forty of us little folks for making faces, and the very 
name of which made us hide our heads under the bed¬ 
clothes. 

I made strange acquaintances in that book infirm¬ 
ary up in the southeast attic. The “Negro Plot” at 
New York helped to implant a feeling in me which it 
took Mr. Garrison a good many years to root out. 
“Thinks I to Myself,” an old novel, which has been 
attributed to a famous statesman, introduced me to 
a world of fiction which was not represented on the 
shelves of the library proper, unless perhaps by Coe- 
lebs in Search of a Wife, or allegories of the bitter 
tonic class, as the young doctor that sits on the other 
side of the table would probably call them. I always, 
from an early age, had a keen eye for a story with a 
moral sticking out of it, and gave it a wide berth, 
though in my later years I have myself written a 
couple of “medicated novels,” as one of my dearest 
and pleasantest old friends wickedly called them, 
when somebody asked her if she had read the last of 
my printed performances. I forgave the satire for 
the charming esprit of the epithet. Besides the works 
I have mentioned, there was an old, old Latin alchemy 
book, with the manuscript annotations of some ancient 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 27 

Rosicrucian, in the pages of which I had a vague no¬ 
tion that I might find the mighty secret of the Lapis 
Philo sophorum , otherwise called Chaos, the Dragon, 
the Green Lion, the Quinta Essentia , the Soap of 
Sages, the Vinegar of Philosophers, the Dew of Hea¬ 
venly Grace, the Egg, the Old Man, the Sun, the 
Moon, and by all manner of odd aliases, as I am as¬ 
sured by the plethoric little book before me, in parch¬ 
ment covers browned like a meerschaum with the 
smoke of furnaces and the thumbing of dead gold- 
seekers, and the fingering of bony-handed book-misers, 
and the long intervals of dusty slumber on the shelves 
of the bouquiniste ; for next year it will be three cen¬ 
turies old, and it had already seen nine generations 
of men when I caught its eye (. Alcliemice Doctrina ) 
and recognized it at pistol-shot distance as a prize, 
among the breviaries and Heures and trumpery vol¬ 
umes of the old open-air dealer who exposed his 
treasures under the shadow of St. Sulpice. I have 
never lost my taste for alchemy since I first got hold 
of the Palladium Spagyricum of Peter John Faber, 
and sought — in vain, it is true — through its pages 
for a clear, intelligible, and practical statement of 
how I could turn my lead sinkers and the weights of 
the tall kitchen clock into good yellow gold, specific 
gravity 19.2, and exchangeable for whatever I then 
wanted, and for many more things than I was then 
aware of. One of the greatest pleasures of childhood 
is found in the mysteries which it hides from the skep¬ 
ticism of the elders, and works up into small mythol¬ 
ogies of its own. I have seen all this played over 
again in adult life, — the same delightful bewilderment 
of semi-emotional belief in listening to the gaseous 
promises of this or that fantastic system, that I found 


28 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

in the pleasing mirages conjured up for me by the 
ragged old volume I used to pore over in the southeast 
attic-chamber. 

The rooms of the second story, the chambers of 
birth and death, are sacred to silent memories. 

Let us go down to the ground-floor. I should 
have begun with this, but that the historical reminis¬ 
cences of the old house have been recently told in a 
most interesting memoir by a distinguished student of 
our local history. I retain my doubts about those 
“dents” on the floor of the right-hand room, “the 
study” of successive occupants, said to have been made 
by the butts of the Continental militia’s firelocks, but 
this was the cause to which the story told me in child¬ 
hood laid them. That military consultations were 
held in that room when the house was General Ward’s 
headquarters, that the Provincial generals and colonels 
and other men of war there planned the movement 
which ended in the fortifying of Bunker’s Hill, that 
Warren slept in the house the night before the battle, 
that President Langdon went forth from the western 
door and prayed for God’s blessing on the men just 
setting forth on their bloody expedition, — all these 
things have been told, and perhaps none of them need 
be doubted. 

But now for fifty years and more that room has 
been a meeting-ground for the platoons and companies 
which range themselves at the scholar’s word of com¬ 
mand. Pleasant it is to think that the retreating host 
of books is to give place to a still larger army of vol¬ 
umes, which have seen service under the eye of a great 
commander. For here the noble collection of him so 
freshly remembered as our silver-tongued orator, our 
erudite scholar, our honored College President, our 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 29 

accomplished statesman, our courtly ambassador, are 
to be reverently gathered by the heir of his name, him¬ 
self not unworthy to be surrounded by that august as¬ 
sembly of the wise of all ages and of various lands and 
languages. 

Could such a many-chambered edifice have stood a 
century and a half and not have had its passages of 
romance to bequeath their lingering legends to the 
after-time? There are other names on some of the 
small window-panes, which must have had young flesh- 
and-blood owners, and there is one of early date which 
elderly persons have whispered was borne by a fair 
woman, whose graces made the house beautiful in the 
eyes of the youth of that time. One especially — you 
will find the name of Fortescue Vernon, of the class 
of 1780, in the Triennial Catalogue — was a favored 
visitor to the old mansion; but he went over seas, I 
think they told me, and died still young, and the 
name of the maiden which is scratched on the window- 
pane was never changed. I am telling the story hon¬ 
estly, as I remember it, but I may have colored it 
unconsciously, and the legendary pane may be broken 
before this for aught I know. At least, I have named 
no names except the beautiful one of the supposed 
hero of the romantic story. 

It was a great happiness to have been born in an 
old house haunted by such recollections, with harmless 
ghosts walking its corridors, with fields of waving 
grass and trees and singing birds, and that vast ter¬ 
ritory of four or five acres around it to give a child the 
sense that he was born to a noble principality. It has 
been a great pleasure to retain a certain hold upon it 
for so many years; and since in the natural course of 
things it must at length pass into other hands, it is a 


30 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


gratification to see the old place making itself tidy for 
a new tenant, like some venerable dame who is getting 
ready to entertain a neighbor of condition. Not long 
since a new cap of shingles adorned this ancient 
mother among the village — now city — mansions. 
She has dressed herself in brighter colors than she has 
hitherto worn, so they tell me, within the last few 
days. She has modernized her aspects in several 
ways; she has rubbed bright the glasses through which 
she looks at the Common and the Colleges; and as the 
sunsets shine upon her through the flickering leaves 
or the wiry spray of the elms I remember from my 
childhood, they will glorify her into the aspect she 
wore when President Holyoke, father of our long since 
dead centenarian, looked upon her in her youthful 
comeliness. 

The quiet corner formed by this and the neighbor¬ 
ing residences has changed less than any place I can 
remember. Our kindly, polite, shrewd, and humorous 
old neighbor, who in former days has served the town 
as constable and auctioneer, and who bids fair to be¬ 
come the oldest inhabitant of the city, was there when 
I was born, and is living there to-day. By and by 
the stony foot of the great University will plant itself 
on this whole territory, and the private recollections 
which clung so tenaciously and fondly to the place 
and its habitations will have died with those who 
cherished them. 

Shall they ever live again in the memory of those 
who loved them here below? What is this life with¬ 
out the poor accidents which made it our own, and 
by which we identify ourselves ? Ah me! I might like 
to be a winged chorister, but still it seems to me I 
should hardly be quite happy if I could not recall at 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 31 

will the Old House with the Long Entry, and the 
White Chamber (where I wrote the first verses that 
made me known, with a pencil, stans pede in uno , 
pretty nearly), and the Little Parlor, and the Study, 
and the old books in uniforms as varied as those of 
the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company used 
to be, if my memory serves me right, and the front 
yard with the Star-of-Bethlehems growing, flowerless, 
among the grass, and the dear faces to be seen no 
more there or anywhere on this earthly place of fare¬ 
wells. 

I have told my story. I do not know what special 
gifts have been granted or denied me; but this I 
know, that I am like so many others of my fellow- 
creatures, that when I smile, I feel as if they must; 
when I cry, I think their eyes fill; and it always seems 
to me that when I am most truly myself I come near¬ 
est to them and am surest of being listened to by the 
brothers and sisters of the larger family into which 
I was born so long ago. I have often feared they 
might be tired of me and what I tell them. But then, 
perhaps, would come a letter from some quiet body in 
some out-of-the-way place, which showed me that I 
had said something which another had often felt but 
never said, or told the secret of another’s heart in un¬ 
burdening my own. Such evidences that one is in the 
highway of human experience and feeling lighten the 
footsteps wonderfully. So it is that one is encour¬ 
aged to go on writing as long as the world has any¬ 
thing that interests him, for he never knows how many 
of his fellow-beings he may please or profit, and in 
how many places his name will be spoken as that of a 
friend. 

In the mood suggested by my story I have ventured- 


32 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


on the poem that follows. Most people love this world 
more than they are willing to confess, and it is hard 
to conceive ourselves weaned from it so as to feel no 
emotion at the thought of its most sacred recollections, 
— even after a sojourn of years, as we should count 
the lapse of earthly time, — in the realm where, sooner 
or later, all tears shall be wiped away. I hope, there¬ 
fore, the title of my lines will not frighten those who 
are little accustomed to think of men and women as 
human beings in any state but the present. 


HOMESICK IN HEAVEN. 

THE DIVINE VOICE. 

Go seek thine earth-born sisters, — thus the Voice 
That all obey, — the sad and silent three ; 

These only, while the hosts of heaven rejoice, 

Smile never : ask them what their sorrows be : 

And when the secret of their griefs they tell, 

Look on them with thy mild, half-human eyes ; 

Say what thou wast on earth ; thou knowest well; 

So shall they cease from unavailing sighs. 

THE ANGEL. 

— Why thus, apart, — the swift-winged herald spake, — 
Sit ye with silent lips and unstrung lyres 

While the trisagion’s blending chords awake 
In shouts of joy from all the heavenly choirs ? 

THE FIRST SPIRIT. 

— Chide not thy sisters, — thus the answer came ; — 
Children of earth, our lialf-weaned nature clings 

To earth’s fond memories, and her whispered name 
Untunes our quivering lips, our saddened strings ; 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


33 


For there we loved, and where we love is home, 

Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts, 
Though o’er us shine the jasper-lighted dome : — 

The chain may lengthen, but it never parts ! 

Sometimes a sunlit sphere comes rolling by, 

And then we softly whisper, — can it be f 
And leaning toward the silvery orb, we try 
To hear the music of its murmuring sea ; 

To catch, perchance, some flashing glimpse of green, 

Or breathe some wild-wood fragrance, wafted through 
The opening gates of pearl, that fold between 
The blinding splendors and the changeless blue. 

THE ANGEL. 

— Nay, sister, nay ! a single healing leaf 

Plucked from the bough of yon twelve-fruited tree, 
Would soothe such anguish, — deeper stabbing grief 
Has pierced thy throbbing heart — 

THE FIRST SPIRIT. 

— Ah, woe is me ! 

I from my clinging babe was rudely torn ; 

His tender lips a loveless bosom pressed ; 

Can I forget him in my life new born ? 

O that my darling lay upon my breast 1 

THE ANGEL. 

— And thou ? — 


THE SECOND SPIRIT. 

I was a fair and youthful bride, 
The kiss of love still burns upon my cheek, 

He whom I worshipped, ever at my side, — 

Him through the spirit realm in vain I seek. 

Sweet faces turn their beaming eyes on mine ; 

Ah ! not in these the wished-for look I read ; 

Still for that one dear human smile I pine ; 

Thou and none other ! — is the lover’s creed. 


34 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


THE ANGEL. 

.— And whence thy sadness in a world of bliss 
Where never parting comes, nor mourner’s tear ? 
Art thou, too, dreaming of a mortal’s kiss 
Amid the seraphs of the heavenly sphere ? 

THE THIRD SPIRIT. 

—- Nay, tax not me with passion’s wasting fire ; 

When the swift message set my spirit free, 

Blind, helpless, lone, I left my gray-haired sire ; 

My friends were many, he had none save me. 

I left him, orphaned, in the starless night; 

Alas, for him no cheerful morning’s dawn ! 

I wear the ransomed spirit’s robe of white, 

Yet still I hear him moaning, She is gone 1 

THE ANGEL. 

— Ye know me not, sweet sisters ? — All in vain 
Ye seek your lost ones in the shapes they wore ; 

The flower once opened may not bud again, 

The fruit once fallen finds the stem no more. 

Child, lover, sire, — yea, all things loved below, — 
Fair pictures damasked on a vapor’s fold,— 

Fade like the roseate flush, the golden glow, 

When the bright curtain of the day is rolled. 

I was the babe that slumbered on thy breast. 

— And, sister, mine the lips that called thee bride. 

— Mine were the silvered locks thy hand caressed, 
That faithful hand, my faltering footstep’s guide I 

Each changing form, frail vesture of decay, 

The soul unclad forgets it once hath worn, 

Stained with the travel of the weary day, 

And shamed with rents from every wayside thorn. 

To lie, an infant, in thy fond embrace, — 

To come with love’s warm kisses back to thee , — 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 35 


To show thine eyes thy gray-haired father’s face, 

Not Heaven itself could grant; this may not be ! 

Then spread your folded wings, and leave to earth 
The dust once breathing ye have mourned so long, 
Till Love, new risen, owns his heavenly birth, 

And sorrow’s discords sweeten into song ! 


II. 

I am going to take it for granted now and hence¬ 
forth, in my report of what was said and what was to 
be seen at our table, that I have secured one good, 
faithful, loving reader, who never finds fault, who 
never gets sleepy over my pages, whom no critic can 
bully out of a liking for me, and to whom I am always 
safe in addressing myself. My one elect may be man 
or woman, old or young, gentle or simple, living in 
the next block or on a slope of Nevada, my fellow- 
countryman or an alien; but one such reader I shall 
assume to exist and have always in my thought when 
I am writing. 

A writer is so like a lover! And a talk with the 
right listener is so like an arm-in-arm walk in the 
moonlight with the soft heartbeat just felt through the 
folds of muslin and broadcloth! But it takes very 
little to spoil everything for writer, talker, lover. 
There are a great many cruel things besides poverty 
that freeze the genial current of the soul, as the poet 
of the Elegy calls it. Fire can stand any wind, but 
flame is easily blown out, and then come smouldering 
and smoke, and profitless, slow combustion without 
the cheerful blaze which sheds light all round it. The 
One Reader’s hand may shelter the flame; the one 


36 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

blessed ministering spirit with the vessel of oil may 
keep it bright in spite of the stream of cold water on 
the other side doing its best to put it out. 

I suppose, if any writer, of any distinguishable in¬ 
dividuality, could look into the hearts of all his read¬ 
ers, he might very probably find one in his parish of 
a thousand or a million who honestly preferred him to 
any other of his kind. I have no doubt we have each 
one of us, somewhere, our exact facsimile, so like us 
in all things except the accidents of condition, that 
we should love each other like a pair of twins, if our 
natures could once fairly meet. I know I have my 
counterpart in some State of this Union. I feel sure 
that there is an Englishman somewhere precisely like 
myself. (I hope he does not drop his A’s, for it does 
not seem to me possible that the Royal Dane could 
have remained faithful to his love for Ophelia, if she 
had addressed him as ’Amlet.) There is also a cer¬ 
tain Monsieur, to me at this moment unknown, and 
likewise a Herr Yon Something, each of whom is 
essentially my double. An Arab is at this moment 
eating dates, a mandarin is just sipping his tea, and 
a South-Sea-Islander (with undeveloped possibilities) 
drinking the milk of a cocoa-nut, each one of whom, 
if he had been born in the gambrel-roofed house, and 
cultivated my little sand-patch, and grown up in “the 
study” from the height of Walton’s Polyglot Bible 
to that of the shelf which held the Elzevir Tacitus and 
Casaubon’s Polybius, with all the complex influences 
about him that surrounded me, would have been so 
nearly what I am that I should have loved him like a 
brother, — always provided that I did not hate him 
for his resemblance to me, on the same principle as 
that which makes bodies in the same electric condi¬ 
tion repel each other. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 37 

For, perhaps after all, my One Reader is quite as 
likely to be not the person most resembling myself, 
but the one to whom my nature is complementary. 
Just as a particular soil wants some one element to 
fertilize it, just as the body in some conditions has a 
kind of famine for one special food, so the mind has 
its wants, which do not always call for what is best, 
but which know themselves and are as peremptory as 
the salt-sick sailor’s call for a lemon or a raw potato, 
or, if you will, as those capricious “longings,” which 
have a certain meaning, we may suppose, and which, 
at any rate we think it reasonable to satisfy if we can. 

I was going to say something about our boarders 
the other day when I got run away with by my local 
reminiscences. I wish you to understand that we 
have a rather select company at the table of our 
boarding-house. 

Our Landlady is a most respectable person, who 
has seen better days, of course, — all landladies have, 
— but has also, I feel sure, seen a good deal worse 
ones. For she wears a very handsome silk dress on 
state occasions, with a breastpin set, as I honestly be¬ 
lieve, with genuine pearls, and appears habitually with 
a very smart cap, from under which her gray curls come 
out with an unmistakable expression, conveyed in the 
hieratic language of the feminine priesthood, to the 
effect that while there is life there is hope. And 
when I come to reflect on the many circumstances 
which go to the making of matrimonial happiness, I 
cannot help thinking that a personage of her present¬ 
able exterior, thoroughly experienced in all the do¬ 
mestic arts which render life comfortable, might make 
the later years of some hitherto companionless bache¬ 
lor very endurable, not to say pleasant. 


38 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

The condition of the Landlady’s family is, from 
what I learn, such as to make the connection I have 
alluded to, I hope with delicacy, desirable for inciden¬ 
tal as well as direct reasons, provided a fitting match 
could be found. I was startled at hearing her address 
by the familiar name of Benjamin the young physi¬ 
cian I have referred to, until I found on inquiry, what 
I might have guessed by the size of his slices of pie 
and other little marks of favoritism, that he was her 
son. He has recently come back from Europe, where 
he has topped off his home training with a first-class 
foreign finish. As the Landlady could never have 
educated him in this way out of the profits of keeping 
boarders, I was not surprised when I was told that she 
had received a pretty little property in the form of a 
bequest from a former boarder, a very kind-hearted, 
worthy old gentleman who had been long with her and 
seen how hard she worked for food and clothes for 
herself and this son of hers, Benjamin Franklin by 
his baptismal name. Her daughter had also married 
well, to a member of what we may call the post-med¬ 
ical profession, that, namely, which deals with the 
mortal frame after the practitioners of the healing 
art have done with it and taken their leave. So 
thriving had this son-in-law of hers been in his busi¬ 
ness, that his wife drove about in her own carriage, 
drawn by a pair of jet-black horses of most dignified 
demeanor, whose only fault was a tendency to relapse 
at once into a walk after every application of a stimu¬ 
lus that quickened their pace to a trot; which appli¬ 
cation always caused them to look round upon the 
driver with a surprised and offended air, as if he had 
been guilty of a grave indecorum. 

The Landlady’s daughter had been blessed with a 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


39 


number of children, of great sobriety of outward as¬ 
pect, but remarkably cheerful in their inward habit 
of mind, more especially on the occasion of the death 
of a doll, which was an almost daily occurrence, and 
gave them immense delight in getting up a funeral, 
for which they had a complete miniature outfit. How 
happy they were under their solemn aspect! For the 
head mourner, a child of remarkable gifts, could ac¬ 
tually make the tears run down her cheeks, — as real 
ones as if she had been a grown person following a 
rich relative, who had not forgotten his connections, 
to his last unfurnished lodgings. 

So this was a most desirable family connection for 
the right man to step into, — a thriving, thrifty 
mother-in-law, who knew what was good for the sus¬ 
tenance of the body, and had no doubt taught it to 
her daughter; a medical artist at hand in case the lux¬ 
uries of the table should happen to disturb the physi¬ 
ological harmonies; and in the worst event, a sweet 
consciousness that the last sad offices would be at¬ 
tended to with affectionate zeal, and probably a large 
discount from the usual charges. 

It seems as if I could hardly be at this table for a 
year, if I should stay so long, without seeing some 
romance or other work itself out under my eyes; and 
I cannot help thinking that the Landlady is to be 
the heroine of the love-history like to unfold itself. I 
think I see the little cloud in the horizon, with a sil¬ 
very lining to. it, which may end in a rain of cards 
tied round with white ribbons. Extremes meet, and 
who so like to be the other party as the elderly gen¬ 
tleman at the other end of the table, as far from her 
now as the length of the board permits? I may be 
mistaken, but I think this is to be the romantic epi- 


40 THE POET AT THE BKEAKF AST-TABLE. 

sode of the year before me. Only it seems so natural 
it is improbable, for you never find your dropped 
money just where you look for it, and so it is with 
these a 'priori matches. 

This gentleman is a tight, tidy, wiry little man, 
with a small, brisk head, close-cropped white hair, a 
good wholesome complexion, a quiet, rather kindly 
face, quick in his movements, neat in his dress, but 
fond of wearing a short jacket over his coat, which 
gives him the look of a pickled or preserved school¬ 
boy. He has retired, they say, from a thriving busi¬ 
ness, with a snug property, suspected by some to be 
rather more than snug, and entitling him to be called 
a capitalist, except that this word seems to be equiva¬ 
lent to highway robber in the new gospel of Saint 
Petroleum. That he is economical in his habits can¬ 
not be denied, for he saws and splits his own wood, — 
for exercise, he says, — and makes his own fires, 
brushes his own shoes, and, it is whispered, darns a 
hole in a stocking now and then, — all for exercise, 
I suppose. Every summer he goes out of town for 
a few weeks. On a given day of the month a wagon 
stops at the door and takes up, not his trunks, for he 
does not indulge in any such extravagance, but the 
stout brown linen bags in which he packs the few con¬ 
veniences he carries with him. 

I do not think this worthy and economical person¬ 
age will have much to do or to say, unless he marries 
the Landlady. If he does that, he will play a part of 
some importance, —but I don’t feel sure at all. His 
talk is little in amount, and generally ends in some 
compact formula condensing much wisdom in few 
words, as that a man should not put all his eggs in 
one basket; that there are as good fish in the sea as 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFxVST-TABLE. 


41 


ever came out of it; and one in particular, which he 
surprised me by saying in pretty good French one 
day, to the effect that the. inheritance of the world 
belongs to the phlegmatic people , which seems to me to 
have a good deal of truth in it. 

The other elderly personage, the old man with 
iron-gray hair and large round spectacles, sits at my 
right at table. He is a retired college officer, a man 
of books and observation, and himself an author. 
Magister Artium is one of his titles on the College 
Catalogue, and I like best to speak of him as the 
Master, because he has a certain air of authority 
which none of us feel inclined to dispute. He has 
given me a copy of a work of his which seems to me 
not wanting in suggestiveness, and which I hope I 
shall be able to make some use of in my records by 
and by. I said the ether day that he had good solid 
prejudices, which is true, and I like him none the 
worse for it; but he has also opinions more or less 
original, valuable, probable, fanciful; fantastic, or 
whimsical, perhaps, now and then; which he promul¬ 
gates at table somewhat in the tone of imperial edicts. 
Another thing I like about him is, that he takes a 
certain intelligent interest in pretty much everything 
that interests other people. I asked him the other 
day what he thought most about in his wide range of 
studies. 

— Sir, — said he, — I take stock in everything that 
concerns anybody. Humani nihil , — you know the 
rest. But if you ask me what is my specialty, I 
should say, I applied myself more particularly to the 
contemplation of the Order of Things. 

— A pretty wide subject, —I ventured to suggest. 

— Not wide enough, sir, —not wide enough to sat- 


42 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

isfy the desire of a mind which wants to get at abso¬ 
lute truth, without reference to the empirical arrange¬ 
ments of our particular planet and its environments. 
I want to subject the formal conditions of space and 
time to a new analysis, and project a possible universe 
outside of the Order of Things. But I have nar¬ 
rowed myself by studying the actual facts of being. 
By and by — by and by — perhaps — perhaps. I 
hope to do some sound thinking in heaven — if I ever 
get there,—he said seriously, and it seemed tome 
not irreverently. 

— I rather like that, — I said. I think your tele- 
scopio people are, on the whole, more satisfactory than 
your microscopic ones. 

[— My left-hand neighbor fidgeted about a little in 
his chair as I said this. But the young man sitting 
not far from the Landlady, to whom my attention had 
been attracted by the expression of his eyes, which 
seemed as if they saw nothing before him, but looked 
beyond everything, smiled a sort of faint starlight 
smile, that touched me strangely; for until that mo¬ 
ment he had appeared as if his thoughts were far 
away, and I had been questioning whether he had 
lost friends lately, or perhaps had never had them, 
he seemed so remote from our boarding-house life. 
I will inquire about him, for he interests me, and I 
thought he seemed interested as I went on talking.] 

— No, — I continued, — I don’t want to have the 
territory of a man’s mind fenced in. I don’t want to 
shut out the mystery of the stars and the awful hollow 
that holds them. We have done with those hypaethral 
temples, that were open above to the heavens, but we 
can have attics and skylights to them. Minds with 
skylights,—yes,—stop, let us see if we can’t get 
something out of that. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 43 

One-story intellects, two - story intellects, three - 
story intellects with skylights. All fact - collectors, 
who have no aim beyond their facts, are one-story 
men. Two-story men compare, reason, generalize, us¬ 
ing the labors of the fact-collectors as well as their 
own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, predict; 
their best illumination comes from above, through 
the skylight. There are minds with large ground- 
floors, that can store an infinite amount of knowledge; 
some librarians, for instance, who know enough of 
books to help other people, without being able to make 
much other use of their knowledge, have intellects of 
this class. Your great working lawyer has two spa¬ 
cious stories; his mind is clear, because his mental 
floors are large, and he has room to arrange his 
thoughts so that he can get at them, — facts below, 
principles above, and all in ordered series; poets are 
often narrow below, incapable of clear statement, and 
with small power of consecutive reasoning, but full of 
light, if sometimes rather bare of furniture, in the 
attics. 

— The old Master smiled. I think he suspects him¬ 
self of a three-story intellect, and I don’t feel sure 
that he is n’t right. 

— Is it dark meat or white meat you will be helped 
to? — said the Landlady, addressing the Master. 

— Dark meat for me, always, —he answered. 
Then turning to me, he began one of those monologues 
of his, such as that which put the Member of the 
Haouse asleep the other day. 

— It’s pretty much the same in men and women 
and in books and everything, that it is in turkeys and 
chickens. Why, take your poets, now, say Browning 


44 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

and Tennyson. Don’t you think you can say which 
is the dark-meat and which is the white-meat poet? 
And so of the people you know; can’t you pick out 
the full-flavored, coarse-fibred characters from the 
delicate, fine-fibred ones? And in the same person, 
don’t you know the same two shades in different parts 
of the character that you find in the wing and thigh 
of a partridge ? I suppose you poets may like white 
meat best, very probably; you had rather have a wing 
than a drumstick, I dare say. 

— Why, yes, — said I, — I suppose some of us do. 
Perhaps it is because a bird flies with his white-fleshed 
limbs and walks with the dark-fleshed ones. Besides, 
the wing-muscles are nearer the heart than the leg- 
muscles. 

I thought that sounded mighty pretty, and paused 
a moment to pat myself on the back, as is my wont 
when I say something that I think of superior quality. 
So I lost my innings; for the Master is apt to strike 
in at the end of a bar, instead of waiting for a rest, 
if I may borrow a musical phrase. No matter, just 
at this moment, what he said; but he talked the 
Member of the Haouse asleep again. 

They have a new term nowadays (I am speaking to 
you, the Reader) for people that do a good deal of 
talking; they call them “conversationists,” or “con¬ 
versationalists”; talkists, I suppose, would do just as 
well. It is rather dangerous to get the name of being 
one of these phenomenal manifestations, as one is ex¬ 
pected to say something remarkable every time one 
opens one’s mouth in company. It seems hard not to 
be able to ask for a piece of bread or a tumbler of 
water, without a sensation running round the table, 
as if one were an electric eel or a torpedo, and could n’t 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 45 

be touched without giving a shock. A fellow is n’t 
all battery, is he? The idea that a Gymnotus can’t 
swallow his worm without a coruscation of animal 
lightning is hard on that brilliant but sensational 
being. Good talk is not a matter of will at all; it 
depends — you know we are all half-materialists now¬ 
adays — on a certain amount of active congestion of 
the brain, and that comes when it is ready, and not 
before. I saw a man get up the other day in a plea¬ 
sant company, and talk away for about five minutes, 
evidently by a pure effort of will. His person was 
good, his voice was pleasant, but anybody could see 
that it was all mechanical labor; he was sparring for 
wind, as the Hon. John Morrissey, M. C., would 
express himself. Presently, — 

Ho you, — Beloved, I am afraid you are not old 
enough, — but do you remember the days of the tin 
tinder-box, the flint, and steel? Click! click! click! 
— Ah-h-h! knuckles that time! click! click! click! 
a spark has taken, and is eating into the black tinder, 
as a six-year-old eats into a sheet of gingerbread. 

Presently, after hammering away for his five min¬ 
utes with mere words, the spark of a happy expression 
took somewhere among the mental combustibles, and 
then for ten minutes we had a pretty, wandering, 
scintillating play of eloquent thought, that enlivened, 
if it did not kindle, all around it. If you want the 
real philosophy of it, I will give it to you. The 
chance thought or expression struck the nervous cen¬ 
tre of consciousness, as the rowel of a spur stings the 
flank of a racer. Away through all the telegraphic 
radiations of the nervous cords flashed the intelligence 
that the brain was kindling, and must be fed with 
something or other, or it would burn itself to ashes. 


46 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

And all the great hydraulic engines poured in their 
scarlet blood, and the fire kindled, and the flame rose; 
for the blood is a stream that, like burning rock-oil, 
at once kindles, and is itself the fuel. You can’t 
order these organic processes, any more than a milli¬ 
ner can make a rose. She can make something that 
looks like a rose, more or less, but it takes all the 
forces of the universe to finish and sweeten that 
blossom in your button-hole; and you may be sure 
that when the orator’s brain is in a flame, when the 
poet’s heart is in a tumult, it is something mightier 
than he and his will that is dealing with him! As I 
have looked from one of the northern windows of the 
street which commands our noble estuary, — the view 
through which is a picture on an illimitable canvas and 
a poem in innumerable cantos, — I have sometimes 
seen a pleasure-boat drifting along, her sail flapping, 
and she seeming as if she had neither will nor aim. 
At her stern a man was laboring to bring her head 
round with an oar, to little purpose, as it seemed to 
those who watched him pulling and tugging. But all 
at once the wind of heaven, which had wandered all 
the way from Florida or from Labrador, it may be, 
struck full upon the sail, and it swelled and rounded 
itself, like a white bosom that had burst its bodice, 
and — 

— You are right; it is too true! but how I love 
these pretty phrases! I am afraid I am becoming an 
epicure in words, which is a bad thing to be, unless it 
is dominated by something infinitely better than itself.' 
But there is a fascination in the mere sound of articu¬ 
lated breath; of consonants that resist with the firm¬ 
ness of a maid of honor, or half or wholly yield to the 
wooing lips; of vowels that flow and murmur, each 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 47 

after its kind; the peremptory b and p, the brittle k, 
the vibrating r, the insinuating s, the feathery /, the 
velvety' v, the bell-voiced m, the tranquil broad a , the 
penetrating e, the cooing u , the emotional o, and the 
beautiful combinations of alternate rock and stream, 
as it were, that they give to the rippling flow of 
speech, — there is a fascination in the skilful hand¬ 
ling of these, which the great poets and even prose- 
writers have not disdained to acknowledge and use to 
recommend their thought. What do you say to this 
line of Homer as a piece of poetical full-band music ? 
I know you read the Greek characters with perfect 
ease, but permit me, just for my own satisfaction, to 
put it into English letters: — 

Aigle pamphanoosa di’ aitlieros ouranon ike ! 
as if he should have spoken in our poorer phrase of 
Splendor far shining through ether to heaven ascending. 

That Greek line, which I do not remember having 
heard mention of as remarkable, has nearly every con¬ 
sonantal and vowel sound in the language. Try it by 
the Greek and by the English alphabet; it is a curi¬ 
osity. Tell me that old Homer did not roll his sight¬ 
less eyeballs about with delight, as he thundered out 
these ringing syllables! It seems hard to think of 
his going round like a hand-organ man, with such 
music and such thought as his to earn his bread with. 
One can’t help wishing that Mr. Pugh could have got 
at him for a single lecture, at least, of the “Star 
Course,” or that he could have appeared in the Music 
Hall, “for this night only.” 

— I know I have rambled, but I hope you see that 
this is a delicate way of letting you into the nature of 
the individual who is, officially, the principal person- 


48 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

age at our table. It would hardly do to describe him 
directly, you know. But you must not think, because 
the lightning zigzags, it does not know where to strike. 

I shall try to go through the rest of my description 
of our boarders with as little of digression as is con¬ 
sistent with my nature. I think we have a somewhat 
exceptional company. Since our Landlady has got 
up in the world, her board has been decidedly a fa¬ 
vorite with persons a little above the average in point 
of intelligence and education. In fact, ever since a 
boarder of hers, not wholly unknown to the reading 
public, brought her establishment into notice, it has 
attracted a considerable number of literary and scien¬ 
tific people, and now and then a politician, like the 
Member of the House of Representatives, otherwise 
called the Great and General Court of the State of 
Massachusetts. The consequence is, that there is 
more individuality of character than in a good many 
similar boarding-houses, where all are business-men, 
engrossed in the same pursuit of money-making, or 
all are engaged in politics, and so deeply occupied 
with the welfare of the community that they can think 
and talk of little else. 

At my left hand sits as singular-looking a human 
being as I remember seeing outside of a regular mu¬ 
seum or tent-show. His black coat shines as if it had 
been polished; and it has been polished on the wear¬ 
er’s back, no doubt, for the arms and other points 
of maximum attrition are particularly smooth and 
bright. Round shoulders, r— stooping over some mi¬ 
nute labor, I suppose. Very slender limbs, with bends 
like a grasshopper’s; sits a great deal, I presume; 
looks as if he might straighten them out all of a sud- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


49 


den, and jump instead of walking. Wears goggles 
very commonly; says it rests his eyes, which he 
strains in looking at very small objects. Voice has a 
dry creak, as if made by some small piece of mechan¬ 
ism that wanted oiling. I don’t think he is a botan¬ 
ist, for he does not smell of dried herbs, but carries 
a camphorated atmosphere about with him, as if to 
keep the moths from attacking him. I must find out 
what is his particular interest. One ought to know 
something about his immediate neighbors at the table. 
This is what I said to myself, before opening a con¬ 
versation with him. Everybody in our ward of the 
city was in a great stir about a certain election, and I 
thought I might as well begin with that as anything. 

— How do you think the vote is likely to go to¬ 
morrow?— I said. 

— It is n’t to-morrow,—he answered,—it’s next 
month. 

— Next month! — said I. —Why, what election do 
you mean ? 

— I mean the election to the Presidency of the En¬ 
tomological Society, sir, — he creaked, with an air of 
surprise, as if nobody could by any possibility have 
been thinking of any other. Great competition, sir, 
between the dipterists and the lepidopterists as to 
which shall get in their candidate. Several close 
hallo tings already; adjourned for a fortnight. Poor 
concerns, both of ’em. Wait till our turn comes. 

— I suppose you are an entomologist? — I said 
with a note of interrogation. 

— Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should 
like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that 
name! A society may call itself an Entomological 
Society, but the man who arrogates such a broad title 


50 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

as that to himself, in the present state of science, is a 
pretender, sir, a dilettante, an impostor! No man 
can he truly called an entomologist, sir; the subject 
is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp, 

— May I venture to ask, — I said, a little awed by 
his statement and manner, — what is your special pro¬ 
vince of study? 

I am often spoken of as a Coleopterist, — he said, 
■—but I have no right to so comprehensive a name. 
The genus Scarabaeus is what I have chiefly confined 
myself to, and ought to have studied exclusively. The 
beetles proper are quite enough for the labor of one 
man’s life. Call me a Scarabeeist if you will; if I 
can prove rAyself worthy of that name, my highest 
ambition will be more than satisfied. 

I think, by way of compromise and convenience, I 
shall call him the Scarabee. He has come to look 
wonderfully like those creatures, — the beetles, I mean, 
-— by being so much among them. His room is hung 
round with cases of them, each impaled on a pin 
driven through him, something as they used to bury 
suicides. These cases take the place for him of pic¬ 
tures and all other ornaments. That Boy steals into 
his room sometimes, and stares at them with great ad¬ 
miration, and has himself undertaken to form a rival 
cabinet, chiefly consisting of flies, so far, arranged in 
ranks superintended by an occasional spider. 

The old Master, who is a bachelor, has a kindly 
feeling for this little monkey, and those of his kind. 

— I like children, — he said to me one day at table, 
— I like ’em, and I respect ’em. Pretty much all the 
honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by 
them. Do you know they play the part in the house¬ 
hold which the king’s jester, who very often had a 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 51 

mighty long head under his cap and hells, used to 
play for a monarch? There ’s no radical club like a 
nest of little folks in a nursery. Did you ever watch 
a baby’s fingers? I have, often enough, though I 
never knew what it was to own one. — The Master 
paused half a minute or so, — sighed, — perhaps at 
thinking what he had missed in life, — looked up at 
me a little vacantly. I saw what was the matter; he 
had lost the thread of his talk. 

— Baby’s fingers, — I intercalated. 

— Yes, yes; did you ever see how they will poke 
those wonderful little fingers of theirs into every fold 
and crack and crevice they can get at? That is their 
first education, feeling their way into the solid facts 
of the material world. When they begin to talk it is 
the same thing over again in another shape. If there 
is a crack or a flaw in your answer to their confounded 
shoulder-hitting questions, they will poke and poke 
until they have got it gaping just as the baby’s fin¬ 
gers have made a rent out of that atom of a hole in 
his pinafore that your old eyes never took notice of. 
Then they make such fools of us by copying on a 
small scale what we do in the grand manner. I won¬ 
der if it ever occurs to our dried-up neighbor there 
to ask himself whether That Boy’s collection of flies 
is n’t about as significant in the Order of Things as 
his own Museum of Beetles? 

— I could n’t help thinking that perhaps That 
Boy’s questions about the simpler mysteries of life 
might have a good deal of the same kind of significance 
as the Master’s inquiries into the Order of Things. 

— On my left, beyond my next neighbor the Scar- 
abee, at the end of the table, sits a person of whom 


52 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

we know little, except that he carries about him 
more palpable reminiscences of tobacco and the allied 
sources of comfort than a very sensitive organization 
might find acceptable. The Master does not seem to 
like him much, for some reason or other, —perhaps 
he has a special aversion to the odor of tobacco. As 
his forefinger shows a little too distinctly that he uses 
a pen, I shall compliment him by calling him the Man 
of Letters, until I find out more about him. 

— The Young Girl who sits on my right, next be¬ 
yond the Master, can hardly be more than nineteen 
or twenty years old. I wish I could paint her so as 
to interest others as much as she does me. But she 
has not a profusion of sunny tresses wreathing a neck 
of alabaster, and a cheek where the rose and the lily 
are trying to settle their old quarrel with alternating 
victory. Her hair is brown, her cheek is delicately 
pallid, her forehead is too ample for a ball-room 
beauty’s. A single faint line between the eyebrows 
is the record of long - continued anxious efforts to 
please in the task she has chosen, or rather which has 
been forced upon her. It is the same line of anxious 
and conscientious effort which I saw not long since on 
the forehead of one of the sweetest and truest singers 
who has visited us; the same which is so striking on 
the masks of singing women painted upon the facade 
of our Great Organ, — that Himalayan home of har¬ 
mony which you are to see and then die, if you don’t 
live where you can see and hear it often. Many 
deaths have happened in a neighboring large city 
from that well-known complaint, Icterus Invidioso - 
rwm, after returning from a visit to the Music Hall. 
The invariable symptom of a fatal attack is the llisus 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 53 

Sardonicus. — But the Young Girl. She gets her 
living by writing stories for a newspaper. Every 
week she furnishes a new story. If her head aches 
or her heart is heavy, so that she does not come to 
time with her story, she falls behindhand and has to 
live on credit. It sounds well enough to say that 
“she supports herself by her pen,” but her lot is a 
trying one; it repeats the doom of the Danaides. 
The “Weekly Bucket” has no bottom, and it is her 
business to help fill it. Imagine for one moment 
what it is to tell a tale that must flow on, flow ever, 
without pausing; the lover miserable and happy this 
week, to begin miserable again next week and end as 
before; the villain scowling, plotting, punished; to 
scowl, plot, and get punished again in our next; an 
endless series of woes and blisses, into each paragraph 
of which the forlorn artist has to throw all the live¬ 
liness, all the emotion, all the graces of style she is 
mistress of, for the wages of a maid of all work, and 
no more recognition or thanks from anybody than the 
apprentice who sets the types for the paper that 
prints her ever-ending and ever-beginning stories. 
And yet she has a pretty talent, sensibility, a natural 
way of writing, an ear for the music of verse, in which 
she sometimes indulges to vary the dead monotony of 
everlasting narrative, and a sufficient amount of in¬ 
vention to make her stories readable. I have found 
my eyes dimmed over them oftener than once, more 
with thinking about her, perhaps, than about her 
heroes and heroines. Poor little body! Poor little 
mind! Poor little soul! She is one of that great 
company of delicate, intelligent, emotional young 
creatures, who are waiting, like that sail I spoke of, 
for some breath of heaven to fill their white bosoms, 


54 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


•— love, the right of every woman; religious emotion, 
sister of love, with the same passionate eyes, but 
cold, thin, bloodless hands, — some enthusiasm of hu¬ 
manity or divinity; and find that life offers them, 
instead, a seat on a wooden bench, a chain to fasten 
them to it, and a heavy oar to pull day and night. 
We read the Arabian tales and pity the doomed lady 
who must amuse her lord and master from day to day 
or have her head cut off; how much better is a mouth 
without bread to fill it than no mouth at all to fill, 
because no head ? We have all round us a weary- 
eyed company of Scheherezades! This is one of them, 
and I may call her by that name when it pleases me 
to do so. 

The next boarder I have to mention is the one who 
sits between the Young Girl and the Landlady. In a 
little chamber into which a small thread of sunshine 
finds its way for half an hour or so every day during 
a month or six weeks of the spring or autumn, at all 
other times obliged to content itself with ungilded 
daylight, lives this boarder, whom, without wronging 
any others of our company, I may call, as she is very 
generally called in the household, The Lady. In giv¬ 
ing her this name it is not meant that there are no 
other ladies at our table, or that the handmaids who 
serve us are not ladies, or to deny the general propo¬ 
sition that everybody who wears the unbifurcated gar¬ 
ment is entitled to that appellation. Only this lady 
has a look and manner which there is no mistaking as 
belonging to a person always accustomed to refined 
and elegant society. Her style is perhaps a little 
more courtly and gracious than some would like. The 
language and manner which betray the habitual de- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 55 

sire of pleasing, and which add a charm to intercourse 
in the higher social circles, are liable to be construed 
by sensitive beings unused to such amenities as an odi¬ 
ous condescension when addressed to persons of less 
consideration than the accused, and as a still more 
odious — you know the word — when directed to those 
who are esteemed by the world as considerable person 
ages. But of all this the accused are fortunately 
wholly unconscious, for there is nothing so entirely 
natural and unaffected as the highest breeding. 

From an aspect of dignified but undisguised econ¬ 
omy which showed itself in her dress as well as in her 
limited quarters, I suspected a story of shipwrecked 
fortune, and determined to question our Landlady. 
That worthy woman was delighted to tell the history 
of her most distinguished boarder. She was, as I had 
supposed, a gentlewoman whom a change of circum¬ 
stances had brought down from her high estate. 

— Did I know the Goldenrod family ? — Of course 
I did.—Well, the Lady was first cousin to Mrs. 
Midas Goldenrod. She had been here in her car¬ 
riage to call upon her, —not very often. —Were her 
rich relations kind and helpful to her? — Well,— 
yes; at least they made her presents now and then. 
Three or four years ago they sent her a silver waiter, 
and every Christmas they sent her a boquet, — it must 
cost as much as five dollars, the Landlady thought. 

— And how did the Lady receive these valuable and 
useful gifts ? 

— Every Christmas she got out the silver waiter 
and borrowed a glass tumbler and filled it with water, 
and put the boquet in it and set it on the waiter. It 
smelt sweet enough and looked pretty for a day or 
two, but the Landlady thought it would n’t have hurt 


56 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


’em if they’d sent a piece of goods for a dress, or 
at least a pocket-handkercher or two, or something or 
other that she could ’a’ made some kind of use of; but 
beggars mustn’t be choosers; not that she was a beg¬ 
gar, for she ’d sooner die than do that if she was in 
want of a meal of victuals. There was a lady I re¬ 
member, and she had a little boy and she was a 
widow, and after she ’d buried her husband she was 
dreadful poor, and she was ashamed to let her little 
boy go out in his old shoes, and copper-toed shoes 
they was too, because his poor little ten — toes — was 
a coming out of ’em; and what do you think my hus¬ 
band’s rich uncle,—well, there now, it was me and 
my little Benjamin, as he was then, there ’s no use in 
hiding of it, — and what do you think my husband’s 
uncle sent me but a plaster of Paris image of a young 
woman, that was,—well, her appearance wasn’t re¬ 
spectable, and I had to take and wrap her up in a 
towel and poke her right into my closet, and there 
she stayed till she got her head broke and served her 
right, for she wasn’t fit to show folks. You needn’t 
say anything about what I told you, but the fact is I 
was desperate poor before I began to support myself 
taking boarders, and a lone woman without her — 
her — 

The sentence plunged into the gulf of her great 
remembered sorrow, and was lost to the records of 
humanity. 

— Presently she continued in answer to my ques¬ 
tions : The Lady was not very sociable; kept mostly 
to herself. The Young Girl (our Scheherezade) used 
to visit her sometimes, and they seemed to like each 
other, but the Young Girl had not many spare hours 
for visiting. The Lady never found fault, but she 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 57 

was very nice in her tastes, and kept everything about 
her looking as neat and pleasant as she could. 

— What did she do ? — Why, she read, and she 
drew pictures, and she did needlework patterns, and 
played on an old harp she had; the gilt was mostly 
off, but it sounded very sweet, and she sung to it 
sometimes, those old songs that used to be in fashion 
twenty or thirty years ago, with words to ’em that 
folks could understand. 

Did she do anything to help support herself ? — The 
Landlady couldn’t say she did, but she thought 
there was rich people enough that ought to buy the 
flowers and things she worked and painted. 

All this points to the fact that she was bred to be 
an ornamental rather than what is called a useful 
member of society. This is all very well so long as 
fortune favors those who are chosen to be the orna¬ 
mental personages; but if the golden tide recedes and 
leaves them stranded, they are more to be pitied than 
almost any other class. “I cannot dig, to beg I am 
ashamed.” 

I think it is unpopular in this country to talk much 
about gentlemen and gentlewomen. People are touchy 
about social distinctions, which no doubt are often in¬ 
vidious and quite arbitrary and accidental, but which 
it is impossible to avoid recognizing as facts of nat¬ 
ural history. Society stratifies itself everywhere, and 
the stratum which is generally recognized as the up¬ 
permost will be apt to have the advantage in easy grace 
of manner and in unassuming confidence, and conse¬ 
quently be more agreeable in the superficial relations 
of life. To compare these advantages with the virtues 
and utilities would be foolish. Much of the noblest 
work in life is done by ill-dressed, awkward, ungainly 


58 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

persons; but that is no more reason for undervaluing 
good manners and what we call high-breeding, than 
the fact that the best part of the sturdy labor of the 
world is done by men with exceptionable hands is to 
be urged against the use of Brown W indsor as a pre¬ 
liminary to appearance in cultivated society. 

I mean to stand up for this poor lady, whose use¬ 
fulness in the world is apparently problematical,. 
She seems to me like a picture which has fallen from 
its gilded frame and lies, face downward, on the dusty 
floor. The picture never was as needful as a window 
or a door, but it was pleasant to see it in its place, 
and it would be pleasant to see it there again, and I, 
for one, should be thankful to have the Lady restored 
by some turn of fortune to the position from which 
she has been so cruelly cast down. 

— I have asked the Landlady about the young man 
sitting near her, the same who attracted my attention 
the other day while I was talking, as I mentioned. 
He passes most of his time in a private observatory, 
it appears; a watcher of the stars. That I suppose 
gives the peculiar look to his lustrous eyes. The 
Master knows him and was pleased to tell me some¬ 
thing about him. 

You call yourself a Poet, —he said, —and we call 
you so, too, and so you are; I read your verses and 
like ’em. But that young man lives in a world be¬ 
yond the imagination of poets, let me tell you. The 
daily home of his thought is in illimitable space, hov¬ 
ering between the two eternities. In his contempla¬ 
tions the divisions of time run together, as in the 
thought of his Maker. With him also, — I say it not 
profanely, — one day is as a thousand years and a 
thousand years as one day. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


59 


This account of his occupation increased the interest 
his look had excited in me, and I have observed him 
more particularly and found out more about him. 
Sometimes, after a long night’s watching, he looks so 
pale and worn, that one would think the cold moon¬ 
light had stricken him with some malign effluence, 
such as it is fabled to send upon those who sleep in 
it. At such times he seems more like one who has 
come from a planet farther away from the sun than 
our earth, than like one of us terrestrial creatures. 
His home is truly in the heavens, and he practises an 
asceticism in the cause of science almost comparable 
to that of Saint Simeon Stylites. Yet they tell me 
he might live in luxury if he spent on himself what he 
spends on science. His knowledge is of that strange, 
remote character, that it seems sometimes almost su¬ 
perhuman. He knows the ridges and chasms of the 
moon as a surveyor knows a garden-plot he has mea¬ 
sured. He watches the snows that gather around the 
poles of Mars; he is on the lookout for the expected 
comet at the moment when its faint stain of diffused 
light first shows itself; he analyzes the ray that comes 
from the sun’s photosphere; he measures the rings 
of Saturn; he counts his asteroids to see that none are 
missing, as the shepherd counts the sheep in his flock. 
A strange unearthly being; lonely, dwelling far apart 
from the thoughts and cares of the planet on which 
he lives, — an enthusiast who gives his life to know¬ 
ledge ; a student of antiquity, to whom the records of 
the geologist are modern pages in the great volume of 
being, and the pyramids a memorandum of yesterday, 
as the eclipse or occultation that is to take place thou¬ 
sands of years hence is an event of to-morrow in the 
diary without beginning and without end where he 


60 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


enters the aspect of the passing moment as it is read 
on the celestial dial. 

In very marked contrast with this young man is the 
something more than middle-aged Register of Deeds, 
a rusty, sallow, smoke-dried looking personage, who 
belongs to this earth as exclusively as the other be¬ 
longs to the firmament. His movements are as me¬ 
chanical as those of a pendulum, — to the office, where 
he changes his coat and plunges into messuages and 
building-lots; then, after changing his coat again, 
back to our table, and so, day by day, the dust of 
years gradually gathering around him as it does on the 
old folios that fill the shelves all round the great cem¬ 
etery of past transactions of which he is the sexton. 

Of the Salesman who sits next him, nothing need 
be said except that he is good-looking, rosy, well- 
dressed, and of very polite manners, only a little more 
brisk than the approved style of carriage permits, — 
as one in the habit of springing with a certain alacrity 
at the call of a customer. 

You would like to see, I don’t doubt, how we sit at 
the table, and I will help you by means of a diagram 
which shows the present arrangement of our seats. 


The The Young Girl The Master The The The Man 

Lady. (Soheherezade). of Arts. Poet. Boarabee. of Letters(?). 


o 

o 

O 

o 

o 

0 

o 





o 

o 

0 

O 

o 

o 

o 

Dr. 

B. Franklin. 

That 

Boy. 

The 

Astronomer. 

The Member of 

the Haouse. 

The Register 
of Deeds. 

The 

Salesman. 



THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 61 

Our young Scheherezade varies her prose stories 
now and then, as I told you, with compositions in 
verse, one or two of which she has let me look over. 
Here is one of them, which she allowed me to copy. 
It is from a story of hers, “The Sun-Worshipper’s 
Daughter,” which you may find in the periodical be¬ 
fore mentioned, to which she is a contributor, if you 
can lay your hand upon a file of it. I think our 
Scheherezade has never had a lover in human shape, 
or she would not play so lightly with the firebrands 
of the great passion. 


FANTASIA. 

Kiss mine eyelids, beauteous Morn, 
Blushing into life new-born ! 

Lend me violets for my hair, 

And thy russet robe to wear, 

And thy ring of rosiest hue 
Set in drops of diamond dew ! 

Kiss my cheek, thou noontide ray, 
From my Love so far away ! 

Let thy splendor streaming down 
Turn its pallid lilies brown, 

Till its darkening shades reveal 
Where his passion pressed its seal! 

Kiss my lips, thou Lord of light, 
Kiss my lips a soft good night ! 
Westward sinks thy golden car ; 
Leave me but the evening star, 
And my solace that shall be, 
Borrowing all its light from thee ! 


62 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


III. 

The old Master was talking about a concert he had 
been to hear. 

— I don’t like your chopped music anyway. That 
woman — she had more sense in her little finger than 
forty medical societies — Florence Nightingale — says 
that the music you pour out is good for sick folks, and 
the music you pound out is n’t. Not that exactly, 
but something like it. I have been to hear some 
music-pounding. It was a young woman, with as 
many white muslin flounces round her as the planet 
Saturn has rings, that did it. She gave the music- 
stool a twirl or two and fluffed down on to it like a 
whirl of soap-suds in a hand-basin. Then she pushed 
up her cuffs as if she was going to fight for the cham¬ 
pion’s belt. Then she worked her wrists and her 
hands, to limber ’em, I suppose, and spread out her 
fingers till they looked as though they would pretty 
much cover the key-board, from the growling end to 
the little squeaky one. Then those two hands of hers 
made a jump at the keys as if they were a couple of 
tigers coming down on a flock of black and white 
sheep, and the piano gave a great howl as if its tail 
had been trod on. Dead stop, — so still you could 
hear your hair growing. Then another jump, and 
another howl, as if the piano had two tails and you 
had trod on both of ’em at once, and then a grand 
clatter and scramble and string of jumps, up and 
down, back and forward, one hand over the other, like 
a stampede of rats and mice more than like anything 
I call music. I like to hear a woman sing, and I like 
to hear a fiddle sing, but these noises they hammer 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 63 

out of their wood and ivory anvils — don’t talk to me, 
I know the difference between a bullfrog and a wood- 
thrush and — 

Pop! went a small piece of artillery such as is made 
of a stick of elder and carries a pellet of very moder¬ 
ate consistency. That Boy was in his seat and look¬ 
ing demure enough, but there could be no question 
that he was the artillery-man who lmd discharged the 
missile. The aim was not a bad one, for it took the 
Master full in the forehead, and had the effect of 
checking the flow of his eloquence. How the little 
monkey had learned to time his interruptions I do not 
know, but I have observed more than once before 
this, that the popgun would go off just at the moment 
when some one of the company was getting too ener¬ 
getic or prolix. The Boy is n’t old enough to judge 
for himself when to intervene to change the order of 
conversation; no, of course he isn’t. Somebody 
must give him a hint. Somebody. — Who is it ? I 
suspect Dr. B. Franklin. He looks too knowing. 
There is certainly a trick somewhere. Why, a day 
or two ago I was myself discoursing, with consider¬ 
able effect, as I thought, on some of the new aspects 
of humanity, when I was struck full on the cheek by 
one of these little pellets, and there was such a con¬ 
founded laugh that I had to wind up and leave off 
with a preposition instead of a good mouthful of poly¬ 
syllables. I have watched our young Doctor, how¬ 
ever, and have been entirely unable to detect any 
signs of communication between him and this auda¬ 
cious child, who is like to become a power among us, 
for that popgun is fatal to any talker who is hit by its 
pellet. I have suspected a foot under the table as 
the prompter, but I have been unable to detect the 


64 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


slightest movement or look as if he were making one, 
on the part of Dr. Benjamin Franklin. I cannot 
help thinking of the flappers in Swift’s Laputa, only 
they gave one a hint when to speak and another a hint 
to listen, whereas the popgun says unmistakably, 
“Shut up!” 

— I should be sorry to lose my confidence in Dr. B c 
Franklin, who seems very much devoted to his busi¬ 
ness, and whom I mean to consult about some small 
symptoms I have had lately. Perhaps it is coming to 
a new boarding-house. The young people who come 
into Paris from the provinces are very apt — so I have 
been told by one that knows — to have an attack of 
typhoid fever a few weeks or months after their arri¬ 
val. I have not been long enough at this table to 
get well acclimated; perhaps that is it. Boarding- 
House Fever. Something like horse-ail, very likely, 
— horses get it, you know, when they are brought to 
city stables. A little “off my feed,” as Hiram Wood¬ 
ruff would say. A queer discoloration about my fore¬ 
head. Query, a bump? Cannot remember any. 
Might have got it against bedpost or something while 
asleep. Very unpleasant to look so. I wonder how 
my portrait would look, if anybody should take it 
now! I hope not quite so badly as one I saw the 
other day, which I took for the end man of the Ethi¬ 
opian Serenaders, or some traveller who had been ex¬ 
ploring the sources of the Niger, until I read the name 
at the bottom and found it was a face I knew as well 
as my own. 

I must consult somebody, and it is nothing more 
than fair to give our young Doctor a chance. Here 
goes for Dr. Benjamin Franklin. 

The young Doctor has a very small office and a very 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 65 

large sign, with a transparency at night big enough 
for an oyster-shop. These young doctors are partic¬ 
ularly strong, as I understand, on what they call di¬ 
agnosis, — an excellent branch of the healing art, full 
of satisfaction to the curious practitioner, who likes to 
give the right Latin name to one’s complaint; not 
quite so satisfactory to the patient, as it is not so very 
much pleasanter to be bitten by a dog with a collar 
round his neck telling you that he is called Snap or 
Teaser , than by a dog without a collar. Sometimes, 
in fact, one would a little rather not know the exact 
name of his complaint, as if he does he is pretty sure 
to look it out in a medical dictionary, and then if he 
reads, This terrible disease is attended with vast 
suffering and is inevitably mortal , or any such state¬ 
ment, it is apt to affect him unpleasantly. 

I confess to a little shakiness when I knocked at 
Dr. Benjamin’s office door. “Come in!” exclaimed 
Dr. B. F. in tones that sounded ominous and sepul¬ 
chral. And I went in. 

I don’t believe the chambers of the Inquisition ever 
presented a more alarming array of implements for 
extracting a confession, than our young Doctor’s office 
did of instruments to make nature tell what was the 
matter with a poor body. 

There were Ophthalmoscopes and Bhinoscopes and 
Otoscopes and Laryngoscopes and Stethoscopes; and 
Thermometers and Spirometers and Dynamometers 
and Sphygmometers and Pleximeters; and Probes and 
Probangs and all sorts of frightful inquisitive explor¬ 
ing contrivances; and scales to weigh you in, and tests 
and balances and pumps and electro-magnets and 
magneto-electric machines; in short, apparatus for 
doing everything but turn you inside out. 


66 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


Dr. Benjamin set me down before bis one window 
and began looking at me with such a superhuman air 
of sagacity, that I felt like one of those open-breasted 
clocks which make no secret of their inside arrange¬ 
ments, and almost thought he could see through me 
as one sees through a shrimp or a jelly-fish. First he 
looked at the place inculpated, which had a sort of 
greenish-brown color, with his naked eyes, with much 
corrugation of forehead and fearful concentration of 
attention; then through a pocket-glass which he car¬ 
ried. Then he drew back a space, for a perspective 
view. Then he made me put out my tongue and laid 
a slip of blue paper on it, which turned red and scared 
me a little. Next he took my wrist; but instead of 
counting my pulse in the old-fashioned way, he fas¬ 
tened a machine to it that marked all the beats on a 
sheet of paper, — for all the world like a scale of the 
heights of mountains, say from Mount Tom up to 
Chimborazo and then down again, and up again, and 
so on. In the mean time he asked me all sorts of 
questions about myself and all my relatives, whether 
we had been subject to this and that malady, until I 
felt as if we must some of us have had more or less of 
them, and could not feel quite sure whether Elephan¬ 
tiasis and Beriberi and Progressive Locomotor Ataxy 
did not run in the family. 

After all this overhauling of myself and my history, 
he paused and looked puzzled. Something was sug¬ 
gested about what he called an “exploratory punc¬ 
ture.” This I at once declined, with thanks. Sud¬ 
denly a thought struck him. He looked still more 
closely at the discoloration I have spoken of. 

— Looks like — I declare it reminds me of — very 
rare! very curious! It would be strange if my first 
case — of this kind — should be one of our boarders I 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 67 

Wliat kind of a case do you call it ? — I said, with 
a sort of feeling that he could inflict a severe or a 
light malady on me, as if he were a judge passing sen¬ 
tence. 

— The color reminds me, — said Dr. B. Franklin, 
— of what I have seen in a case of Addison’s Disease, 
Morbus Addisonii. 

— But my habits are quite regular, — I said; for I 
remembered that the distinguished essayist was too 
fond of his brandy and water, and I confess that the 
thought was not pleasant to me of following Dr. John¬ 
son’s advice, with the slight variation of giving my 
days and my nights to trying on the favorite maladies 
of Addison. 

— Temperance people are subject to it! — ex¬ 
claimed Dr. Benjamin, almost exultingly, I thought. 

— But I had the impression that the author of the 
Spectator was afflicted with a dropsy, or some such 
inflated malady, to which persons of sedentary and 
bibacious habits are liable. [A literary swell, — I 
thought to myself, but I did not say it. I felt too 
serious.] 

— The author of the Spectator! — cried out Dr. 
Benjamin, — I mean the celebrated Dr. Addison, in¬ 
ventor, I would say discoverer, of the wonderful new 
disease called after him. 

-— And what may this valuable invention or discov¬ 
ery consist in ? — I asked, for I was curious to know 
the nature of the gift which this benefactor of the race 
had bestowed upon us. 

— A most interesting affection, and rare, too. Al¬ 
low me to look closely at that discoloration once more 
for a moment. Cutis cenea , bronze skin, they call 
it sometimes — extraordinary pigmentation — a little 


68 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


more to the light, if you please — ah! now I get the 
bronze coloring admirably, beautifully I Would you 
have any objection to showing your case to the Soci¬ 
eties of Medical Improvement and Medical Obser¬ 
vation ? 

[—My case! O dear!] May I ask if any vital 
organ is commonly involved in this interesting com¬ 
plaint ? — I said, faintly. 

— Well, sir, — the young Doctor replied, — there 
is an organ which is — sometimes — a little — 
touched, I may say; a very curious and — ingenious 
little organ or pair of organs. Did you ever hear of 
the Capsulce Suprarenales f 

— No,—said I,—is it a mortal complaint? — I 
ought to have known better than to ask such a ques¬ 
tion, but I was getting nervous and thinking about all 
sorts of horrid maladies people are liable to, with hor¬ 
rid names to match. 

-— It is n’t a complaint, — # I mean they are not a 
complaint, — they are two small organs, as I said, 
inside of you, and nobody knows what is the use of 
them. The most curious thing is that when anything 
is the matter with them you turn of the color of 
bronze. After all, I didn’t mean to say I believed 
it was Morbus Addisonii; I only thought of that 
when I saw the discoloration. 

So he gave me a recipe, which I took care to put 
where it could do no hurt to anybody, and I paid him 
his fee (which he took with the air of a man in the re¬ 
ceipt of a great income) and said Good-morning. 

— What in the name of a thousand diablos is the 
reason these confounded doctors will mention their 
guesses about “a case,” as they call it, and all its con- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 69 

ceivable possibilities, out loud before their patients? 
I don’t suppose there is anything in all this nonsense 
about “Addison’s Disease,” but I wish he hadn’t 
spoken of that very interesting ailment, and I should 
feel a little easier if that discoloration would leave my 
forehead. I will ask the Landlady about it, — these 
old women often know more than the young doctors 
just come home with long names for everything they 
don’t know how to cure. But the name of this com¬ 
plaint sets me thinking. Bronzed skin! What an 
odd idea! Wonder if it spreads all over one. That 
would be picturesque and pleasant, now, wouldn’t it? 
To be made a living statue of, — nothing to do but 
strike an attitude. Arm up — so — like the one in 
the Garden. John of Bologna’s Mercury — thus — 
on one foot. Needy knife-grinder in the Tribune at 
Florence. No, not “ needy,” come to think of it. 
Marcus Aurelius on horseback. Query. Are horses 
subject to the Morbus A ddisoniit Advertise for a 
bronzed living horse — Lyceum invitations and en¬ 
gagements— bronze versus brass.—What’s the use 
in being frightened? Bet it was a bump. Pretty cer¬ 
tain I bumped my forehead against something. Never 
heard of a bronzed man before. Have seen white men, 
black men, red men, yellow men, two or three blue 
men, stained with doctor’s stuff; some green ones, — 
from the country; but never a bronzed man. Poh, 
poh! Sure it was a bump. Ask Landlady to look 
at it. 

— Landlady did look at it. Said it was a bump, 
and no mistake. Recommended a piece of brown 
paper dipped in vinegar. Made the house smell as if 
it were in quarantine for the plague from Smyrna, but 
discoloration soon disappeared, — so I did not become 


70 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

a bronzed man after all, — hope I never shall while I 
am alive. Should n’t mind being done in bronze after 
I was dead. On second thoughts not so clear about 
it, remembering how some of them look that we have 
got stuck up in public; think I had rather go down to 
posterity in an Ethiopian Minstrel portrait, like our 
friend’s the other day. 

— You were kind enough to say, I remarked to the 
Master, that you read my poems and liked them. 
Perhaps you would be good enough to tell me what it 
is you like about them ? 

The Master harpooned a breakfast-roll and held it 
up before me. —Will you tell me, —he said, —why 
you like that breakfast-roll? — I suppose he thought 
that would stop my mouth in two senses. But he was 
mistaken. 

— To be sure I will, — said I. — First, I like its 
mechanical consistency; brittle externally, — that is 
for the teeth, which want resistance to be overcome; 
soft, spongy, well tempered and flavored internally, 
— that is for the organ of taste; wholesome, nutri¬ 
tious, — that is for the internal surfaces and the sys¬ 
tem generally. 

— Good! — said the Master, and laughed a hearty 
terrestrial laugh. 

I hope he will carry that faculty of an honest laugh 
with him wherever he goes, — why should n’t he ? The 
“order of things,” as he calls it, from which hilarity 
was excluded, would be crippled and one-sided 
enough. I don’t believe the human gamut will be 
cheated of a single note after men have done breath¬ 
ing this fatal atmospheric mixture and die into the 
ether of immortality! 


THE POET AT THE BEEAKFA ST-TABLE. 71 

I didn’t say all that; if I had said it, it would 
have brought a pellet from the popgun, I feel quite 
certain. 

The Master went on after he had had out his laugh. 

— There is one thing I am His Imperial Majesty 
about, and that is my likes and dislikes. What if 
I do like your verses,—you can’t help yourself. I 
don’t doubt somebody or other hates ’em and hates 
you and everything you do, or ever did, or ever can 
do. He is all right; there is nothing you or I like 
that somebody does n’t hate. Was there ever any¬ 
thing wholesome that was not poison to somebody? 
If you hate honey or cheese, or the products of the 
dairy, — I know a family a good many of whose mem¬ 
bers can’t touch milk, butter, cheese, and the like, — 
why, say so, but don’t find fault with the bees and the 
cows. Some are afraid of roses, and I have known 
those who thought a pond-lily a disagreeable neighbor. 
That Boy will give you the metaphysics of likes and 
dislikes. Look here, — you young philosopher over 
there, —do you like candy? 

That Boy. —You bet! Give me a stick and see 
if I don’t. 

And can you tell me why you like candy ? 

That Boy. — Because I do. 

— There, now, that is the whole matter in a nut¬ 
shell. Why do your teeth like crackling crust, and 
your organs of taste like spongy crumb, and your di¬ 
gestive contrivances take kindly to bread rather than 
toadstools — 

That Boy (thinking he was still being catechised). 

— Because they do. 

Whereupon the Landlady said, Sh! and the Young 
Girl laughed, and the Lady smiled; and Dr. Ben 


72 THE POET AT THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 

Franklin kicked him, moderately, under the table, 
and the Astronomer looked up at the ceiling to see 
what had happened, and the Member of the Haouse 
cried, Order! Order! and the Salesman said, Shut up, 
cashboy! and the rest of the boarders kept on feeding; 
except the Master, who looked very hard but half ap¬ 
provingly at the small intruder, who had come about 
as nearly right as most professors would have done. 

— You poets,—the Master said after this excite¬ 
ment had calmed down, — you poets have one thing 
about you that is odd. You talk about everything as 
if you knew more about it than the people whose busi¬ 
ness it is to know all about it. I suppose you do a 
little of what we teachers used to call “ cramming ” 
now and then? 

— If you like your breakfast you must n’t ask the 
cook too many questions, — I answered. 

— Oh, come now, don’t be afraid of letting out 
your secrets. I have a notion I can tell a poet that 
gets himself up just as I can tell a make-believe old 
man on the stage by the line where the gray skull¬ 
cap joins the smooth forehead of the young fellow 
of seventy. You ’ll confess to a rhyming dictionary 
anyhow, won’t you? 

— I would as lief use that as any other dictionary 9 
but I don’t want it. When a word comes up fit to 
end a line with I can feel all the rhymes in the lan¬ 
guage that are fit to go with it without naming them. 
I have tried them all so many times, I know all the 
polygamous words and all the monogamous ones, and 
all the unmarrying ones, — the whole lot that have no 
mates, — as soon as I hear their names called. Some¬ 
times I run over a string of rhymes, but generally 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 73 

speaking it is strange what a short list it is of those 
that are good for anything. That is the pitiful side 
of all rhymed verse. Take two such words as home 
and icorld. What can you do with chrome or loam 
or gnome or tome f You have dome, foam, and roam, 
and not much more to use in your pome, as some of 
our fellow-countrymen call it. As for world, you 
know that in all human probability somebody or some¬ 
thing will be hurled into it or out of it; its clouds 
may be furled or its grass impearled; possibly some¬ 
thing may be whirled, or curled, or have swirled, — 
one of Leigh Hunt’s words, which with lush, one of 
Keats’s, is an important part of the stock in trade of 
some dealers in rhyme. 

— And how much do you versifiers know of all 
those arts and sciences you refer to as if you were as 
familiar with them as a cobbler is with his wax and 
lapstone? 

— Enough not to make too many mistakes. The 
best way is to ask some expert before one risks him¬ 
self very far in illustrations from a branch he does not 
know much about. Suppose, for instance, I wanted 
to use the double star to illustrate anything, say the 
relation of two human souls to each other, what would 
I do? Why, I would ask our young friend there 
to let me look at one of those loving celestial pairs 
through his telescope, and I don’t doubt he ’d let me 
do so, and tell me their names and all I wanted to 
know about them. 

— I should be most happy to show any of the 
double stars or whatever else there might be to see in 
the heavens to any of our friends at this table, — the 
young man said, so cordially and kindly that it was 
a real invitation. 


74 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— Show us the man in the moon, — said That Boy. 

— I should so like to see a double star! — said 
Scheherezade, with a very pretty air of smiling mod¬ 
esty. 

— Will you go, if we make up a party? — I asked 
the Master. 

— A cold in the head lasts me from three to five 
days, — answered the Master. — I am not so very 
fond of being out in the dew like Nebuchadnezzar: 
that will do for you young folks. 

— I suppose I must be one of the young folks, — 
not so young as our Scheherezade, nor so old as the 
Capitalist, — young enough at any rate to want to 
be of the party. So we agreed that on some fair 
night when the Astronomer should tell us that there 
was to be a fine show in the skies, we would make up 
a party and go to the Observatory. I asked the 
Scarabee whether he would not like to make one of us. 

— Out of the question, sir, out of the question. I 
am altogether too much occupied with an important 
scientific investigation to devote any considerable part 
of an evening to star-gazing. 

— Oh, indeed, — said I, — and may I venture to 
ask on what particular point you are engaged just at 
present? 

— Certainly, sir, you may. It is, I suppose, as 
difficult and important a matter to be investigated as 
often comes before a student of natural history. I 
wish to settle the point once for all whether the Pedi- 
culus Melittce is or is not the larva of Meloe. 

[—Now is n’t this the drollest world to live in that 
one could imagine, short of being in a fit of delirium 
tremens f Here is a fellow-creature of mine and 
yours who is asked to see all the glories of the firm a- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 75 

ment brought close to him, and he is too busy with a 
little unmentionable parasite that infests the bristly 
surface of a bee to spare an hour or two of a single 
evening for the splendors of the universe! I must 
get a peep through that microscope of his and see the 
pediculus which occupies a larger space in his mental 
vision than the midnight march of the solar systems. 
— The creature, the human one, I mean, interests 
me.] 

— I am very curious, — I said, — about that pedi¬ 
culus melittce , — (just as if I knew a good deal about 
the little wretch and wanted to know more, whereas 
I had never heard him spoken of before, to my know¬ 
ledge,)— could you let me have a sight of him in your 
microscope ? 

— You ought to have seen the way in which the 
poor dried-up little Scarabee turned towards me. His 
eyes took on a really human look, and I almost 
thought those antennae-like arms of his would have 
stretched themselves out and embraced me. I don’t 
believe any of the boarders had ever shown any in¬ 
terest in him, except the little monkey of a Boy, since 
he had been in the house. It is not strange; he had 
not seemed to me much like a human being, until all 
at once I touched the one point where his vitality had 
concentrated itself, and he stood revealed a man and a 
brother. 

— Come in, — said he, — come in, right after break¬ 
fast, and you shall see the animal that has convulsed 
the entomological world with questions as to his nature 
and origin. 

— So I went into the Scarabee’s parlor, lodging- 
room, study, laboratory, and museum, — a single 
apartment applied to these various uses, you under¬ 
stand. 


76 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— I wish I had time to have you show me all your 
treasures, — I said, — but I am afraid I shall hardly 
be able to do more than look at the bee-parasite. But 
what a superb butterfly you have in that case! 

— Oh, yes, yes, well enough, — came from South 
America with the beetle there; look at him ! These 
Lepidoptera are for children to play with, pretty to 
look at, so some think. Give me the Coleoptera , and 
the kings of the Coleoptera are the beetles! Lepi¬ 
doptera and Neuroptera for little folks; Coleoptera 
for men, sir! 

— The particular beetle he showed me in the case 
with the magnificent butterfly was an odious black 
wretch that one would say, Ugh! at, and kick out of 
his path, if he did not serve him worse than that. 
But he looked at it as a coin-collector would look at a 
Pescennius Niger, if the coins of that Emperor are as 
scarce as they used to be when I was collecting half¬ 
penny tokens and pine-tree shillings and battered bits 
of Roman brass with the head of Gallienus or some 
such old fellow on them. 

— A beauty! — he exclaimed, — and the only spe¬ 
cimen of the kind in this country, to the best of my 
belief. A unique, sir, and there is a pleasure in ex¬ 
clusive possession. Not another beetle like that short 
of South America, sir. 

— I was glad to hear that there were no more like 
it in this neighborhood, the present supply of cock¬ 
roaches answering every purpose, so far as I am con¬ 
cerned, that such an animal as this would be likely 
to serve. 

— Here are my bee-parasites, — said the Scarabee, 
showing me a box full of glass slides, each with a 
specimen ready mounted for the microscope. I was 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


77 


most struck with one little beast flattened out like a 
turtle, semi-transparent, six-legged, as I remember 
him, and every leg terminated by a single claw hooked 
like a lion’s and as formidable for the size of the crea¬ 
ture as that of the royal beast. 

— Lives on a bumblebee, does he? — I said.—- 
That’s the way I call it. Bumblebee or bumblybee 
and huckleberry. Humblebee and whortleberry for 
people that say Woos-ses-ter and Nor-wich. 

— The Scarabee did not smile; he took no interest 
in trivial matters like this. 

— [Lives on a bumblebee. When you come to 
think of it, he must lead a pleasant kind of life. Sails 
through the air without the trouble of flying. Free 
pass everywhere that the bee goes. No fear of being 
dislodged; look at those six grappling-hooks. Helps 
himself to such juices of the bee as he likes best; the 
bee feeds on the choicest vegetable nectars, and he 
feeds on the bee. Lives either in the air or in the 
perfumed pavilion of the fairest and sweetest flowers. 
Think what tents the hollyhocks and the great lilies 
spread for him! And wherever he travels a band of 
music goes with him, for this hum which wanders 
by us is doubtless to him a vast and inspiring strain 
of melody.] — I thought all this, while the Scarabee 
supposed I was studying the minute characters of the 
enigmatical specimen. 

— I know what I consider your pediculus melittce , 
I said at length. 

Do you think it really the larva of meloe f 

— Oh, I don’t know much about that, but I think 
he is the best cared for, on the whole, of any animal 
that I know of; and if I wasn’t a man I believe I 
had rather be that little sybarite than anything that 
feasts at the board of nature. 


78 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


— The question is, whether he is the larva of meloe , 
— the Scarabee said, as if he had not heard a word 
of what I had just been saying. — If I live a few years 
longer it shall be settled, sir; and if my epitaph can 
say honestly that I settled it, I shall be willing to 
trust my posthumous fame to that achievement. 

I said good morning to the specialist, and went off 
feeling not only kindly, but respectfully towards him. 
He is an enthusiast, at any rate, as “ earnest ” a man 
as any philanthropic reformer who, having passed his 
life in worrying people out of their misdoings into 
good behavior, comes at last to a state in which he is 
never contented except when he is making somebody 
uncomfortable. He does certainly know one thing 
well, very likely better than anybody in the world. 

I find myself somewhat singularly placed at our 
table between a minute philosopher who has concen¬ 
trated all his faculties on a single subject, and my 
friend who finds the present universe too restricted 
for his intelligence. I would not give much to hear 
what the Scarabee says about the old Master, for he 
does not pretend to form a judgment of anything but 
beetles, but I should like to hear what the Master has 
to say about the Scarabee. I waited after breakfast 
until he had gone, and then asked the Master what 
he could make of our dried-up friend. 

— Well,—he said,—I am hospitable enough in 
my feelings to him and all his tribe. These special¬ 
ists are the coral-insects that build up a reef. By 
and by it will be an island, and for aught we know 
may grow into a continent. But 1 don’t want to be a 
coral-insect myself. I had rather be a voyager that 
visits all the reefs and islands the creatures build, and 
sails over the seas where they have as yet built up no- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 79 

thing. I am a little afraid that science is breeding us 
down too fast into coral-insects. A man like Newton 
or Leibnitz or Haller used to paint a picture of out¬ 
ward or inward nature with a free hand, and stand 
back and look at it as a whole and feel like an archan¬ 
gel ; but nowadays you have a Society, and they come 
together and make a great mosaic, each man bringing 
his little bit and sticking it in its place, but so taken 
up with his petty fragment that he never thinks of 
looking at the picture the little bits make when they 
are put together. You can’t get any talk out of these 
specialists away from their own subjects, any more 
than you can get help from a policeman outside of his 
own beat. 

— Yes,—said I,—but why shouldn’t we always 
set a man talking about the thing he knows best? 

— No doubt, no doubt, if you meet him once; but 
what are you going to do with him if you meet him 
every day? I travel with a man and we want to 
make change very often in paying bills. But every 
time I ask him to change a pistareen, or give me two 
fo’pencehappennies for a ninepence, or help me to 
make out two and thrippence (mark the old Master’s 
archaisms about the currency), what does the fellow 
do but put his hand in his pocket and pull out an old 
Roman coin; I have no change, says he, but this as- 
sarion of Diocletian. Mighty deal of good that ’ll do 
me! 

— It isn’t quite so handy as a few specimens of 
the modern currency would be, but you can pump him 
on numismatics. 

— To be sure, to be sure. I ’ve pumped a thousand 
men of all they could teach me, or at least all I could 
learn from ’em; and if it comes to that, I never saw 


80 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


the man that couldn’t teach me something. I can 
get along with everybody in his place, though I think 
the place of some of my friends is over there among 
the feeble-minded pupils, and I don’t believe there ’s 
one of them I couldn’t go to school to for half an 
hour and be the wiser for it. But people you talk 
with every day have got to have feeders for their 
minds, as much as the stream that turns a mill-wheel 
has. It isn’t one little rill that’s going to keep the 
float-boards turning round. Take a dozen of the 
brightest men you can find in the brightest city, wher¬ 
ever that may be, — perhaps you and I think we know, 
— and let ’em come together once a month, and you ’ll 
find out in the course of a year or two the ones that 
have feeders from all the hillsides. Your common 
talkers, that exchange the gossip of the day, have no 
wheel in particular to turn, and the wash of the rain 
as it runs down the street is enough for them. 

— Do you mean you can always see the sources 
.from which a man fills his mind, — his feeders, as you 
call them? 

— I don’t go quite so far as that, — the Master 
said. — I ’ve seen men whose minds were always over¬ 
flowing, and yet they didn’t read much nor go much 
into the world. Sometimes you ’ll find a bit of a 
pond-hole in a pasture, and you ’ll plunge your walk¬ 
ing-stick into it and think you are going to touch bot¬ 
tom. But you find you are mistaken. Some of these 
little stagnant pond-holes are a good deal deeper than 
you think; you may tie a stone to a bed-cord and not 
get soundings in some of ’em. The country boys will 
tell you they have no bottom, but that only means 
that they are mighty deep; and so a good many stag¬ 
nant, stupid-seeming people are a great deal deeper 



THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


81 


than the length of your intellectual walking-stick, I 
can tell you. There are hidden springs that keep the 
little pond-holes full when the mountain brooks are all 
dried up. You poets ought to know that. 

— I can’t help thinking you are more tolerant to¬ 
wards the specialists than I thought at first, by the 
way you seemed to look at our dried-up neighbor and 
his small pursuits. 

— I don’t like the word tolerant ,—the Master 
said. — As long as the Lord can tolerate me I think 
I can stand my fellow-creatures. Philosophically, I 
love ’em all; empirically, I don’t think I am very fond 
of all of ’em. It depends on how you look at a man 
or a woman. Come here, Youngster, will you? — 
he said to That Boy. 

The Boy was trying to catch a blue-bottle to add to 
his collection, and was indisposed to give up the chase; 
but he presently saw that the Master had taken out a 
small coin and laid it on the table, and felt himself 
drawn in that direction. 

Bead that, — said the Master. 

U-n-i-ni — United States of America 5 cents. 

The Master turned the coin over. Now read that. 

In God is our t-r-u-s-t — trust. 1869. 

— Is that the same piece of money as the other 
one? 

— There ain’t any other one, — said the Boy, —' 
there ain’t but one, but it’s got two sides to it with 
different reading. 

— That’s it, that’s it,—said the Master,—two 
sides to everybody, as there are to that piece of 
money. I ’ve seen an old woman that wouldn’t fetch 
five cents if you should put her up for sale at public 
auction; and yet come to read the other side of her, 


82 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

she had a trust in God Almighty that was like the 
bow anchor of a three-decker. It’s faith in some¬ 
thing and enthusiasm for something that makes a life 
worth looking at. I don’t think your ant-eating spe¬ 
cialist, with his sharp nose and pin-head eyes, is the 
best every-day companion; but any man who knows 
one thing well is worth listening to for once; and if 
you are of the large-brained variety of the race, and 
want to fill out your programme of the Order of 
Things in a systematic and exhaustive way, and get 
all the half-notes and flats and sharps of humanity 
into your scale, you’d a great deal better shut your 
front door and open your two side ones when you 
come across a fellow that has made a real business of 
doing anything. 

— That Boy stood all this time looking hard at the 
five-cent piece. 

— Take it, — said the Master, with a good-natured 
smile. 

— The Boy made a snatch at it and was off for the 
purpose of investing it. 

— A child naturally snaps at a thing as a dog does 
at his meat, — said the Master. — If you think of it, 
we’ve all been quadrupeds. A child that can only 
crawl has all the instincts of a four-footed beast. It 
carries things in its mouth just as cats and dogs do. 
I’ve seen the little brutes do it over and over again. 
I suppose a good many children would stay quadru¬ 
peds all their lives, if they didn’t learn the trick of 
walking on their hind legs from seeing all the grown 
people walking in that way. 

— Do you accept Mr. Darwin’s notions about the 
origin of the race? — said I. 

The Master looked at me with that twinkle in his 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 83 

eye which means that he is going to parry a ques¬ 
tion. 

— Better stick to Blair’s Chronology; that settles 
it. Adam and Eve, created Friday, October 28th, b. 
C. 4004. You’ve been in a ship for a good while, 
and here comes Mr. Darwin on deck with an armful 
of sticks and says, “Let’s build a raft, and trust our¬ 
selves to that.” 

If your ship springs a leak, what would you do ? 

He looked me straight in the eyes for about half a 
minute. —If I heard the pumps going, I ’d look and 
see whether they were gaining on the leak or not. If 
they were gaining I ’d stay where I was. — Go and 
find out what’s the matter with that young woman. 

I had noticed that the Young Girl — the story - 
writer, our Scheherezade, as I called her — looked as 
if she had been crying or lying awake half the night. 
I found on asking her, — for she is an honest little 
body and is disposed to be confidential with me for 
some reason or other, — that she had been doing both. 

— And what was the matter now, I questioned her 
in a semi-paternal kind of way, as soon as I got a 
chance for a few quiet words with her. 

She was engaged to write a serial story, it seems, 
and had only got as far as the second number, and 
some critic had been jumping upon it, she said, and 
grinding his heel into it, till she couldn’t bear to look 
at it. He said she did not write half so well as half 
a dozen other young women. She didn’t write half 
so well as she used to write herself. She had n’t any 
characters and she hadn’t any incidents. Then he 
went to work to show how her story was coming out, 
— trying to anticipate everything she could make of 
it, so that her readers should have nothing to look for- 


84 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ward to, and he should have credit for his sagacity in 
guessing, which was nothing so very wonderful, she 
seemed to think. Things she had merely hinted and 
left the reader to infer, he told right out in the blunt¬ 
est and coarsest way. It had taken all the life out of 
her, she said. It was just as if at a dinner-party one 
of the guests should take a spoonful of soup and get 
up and say to the company, “ Poor stuff, poor stuff; 
you won’t get anything better; let’s go somewhere 
else where things are fit to eat.” 

What do you read such things for, my dear? — 
said I. 

The film glistened in her eyes at the strange sound 
of those two soft words; she had not heard such very 
often, I am afraid. 

— I know I am a foolish creature to read them, — 
she answered,—but I can’t help it; somebody al¬ 
ways sends me everything that will make me wretched 
to read, and so I sit down and read it, and ache all 
over for my pains, and lie awake all night. 

— She smiled faintly as she said this, for she saw 
the sub-ridiculous side of it, but the film glittered still 
in her eyes. There are a good many real miseries in 
life that we cannot help smiling at, but they are the 
smiles that make wrinkles and not dimples. “ Some¬ 
body always sends her everything that will make her 
wretched.” Who can those creatures be who cut out 
the offensive paragraph and send it anonymously to 
us, who mail the newspaper which has the article we 
had much better not have seen, who take care that we 
shall know everything which can, by any possibility, 
help to make us discontented with ourselves and a lit¬ 
tle less light-hearted than we were before we had been 
fools enough to open their incendiary packages? I 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 85 

don’t like to say it to myself, but I cannot help sus¬ 
pecting, in this instance, the doubtful-looking person¬ 
age who sits on my left, beyond the Scarabee. I have 
some reason to think that he has made advances to the 
Young Girl which were not favorably received, to 
state the case in moderate terms, and it may be that 
he is taking his revenge in cutting up the poor girl’s 
story. I know this very well, that some personal 
pique or favoritism is at the bottom of half the praise 
and dispraise which pretend to be so very ingenuous 
and discriminating. (Of course I have been thinking 
all this time and telling you what I thought.) 

— What you want is encouragement, my dear, — 
said I, — I know that as well as you. I don’t think 
the fellows that write such criticisms as you tell me 
of want to correct your faults. I don’t mean to say 
that you can learn nothing from them, because they 
are not all fools by any means, and they will often 
pick out your weak points with a malignant sagacity, 
as a pettifogging lawyer will frequently find a real flaw 
in trying to get at everything he can quibble about. 
But is there nobody who will praise you generously 
when you do well, — nobody that will lend you a hand 
now while you want it, — or must they all wait until 
you have made yourself a name among strangers, and 
then all at once find out that you have something in 
you? 

Oh, — said the girl, and the bright film gathered 
too fast for her young eyes to hold much longer, — I 
ought not to be ungrateful! I have found the kindest 
friend in the world. Have you ever heard the Lady 
— the one that I sit next to at the table — say any¬ 
thing about me? 

I have not really made her acquaintance, I said. 


86 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

She seems to me a little distant in her manners, and I 
have respected her pretty evident liking for keeping 
mostly to herself. 

— Oh, but when you once do know her! I don’t 
believe I could write stories all the time as I do, if 
she did n’t ask me up to her chamber, and let me read 
them to her. Do you know, I can make her laugh 
and cry, reading my poor stories? And sometimes, 
when I feel as if I had written out all there is in 
me, and want to lie down and go to sleep and never 
wake up except in a world where there are no weekly 
papers, — when everything goes wrong, like a car off 
the track, — she takes hold and sets me on the rails 
again all right. 

— How does she go to work to help you ? 

— Why, she listens to my stories, to begin with, as 
if she really liked to hear them. And then you 
know I am dreadfully troubled now and then with 
some of my characters, and can’t think how to get rid 
of them. And she ’ll say, perhaps, Don’t shoot your 
villain this time, you’ve shot three or four already in 
the last six weeks; let his mare stumble and throw 
him and break his neck. Or she ’ll give me a hint 
about some new way for my lover to make a declara¬ 
tion. She must have had a good many offers, it’s my 
belief, for she has told me a dozen different ways for 
me to use in my stories. And whenever I read a 
story to her, she always laughs and cries in the right 
places; and that’s such a comfort, for there are some 
people that think everything pitiable is so funny, and 
will burst out laughing when poor Rip Van Winkle 
— you’ve seen Mr. Jefferson, haven’t you?—is 
breaking your heart for you if you have one. Some¬ 
times she takes a poem I have written and reads it to 


THE POET AT THE EREAKFAST-TABLE. 87 

me so beautifully, that I fall in love with it, and some¬ 
times she sets my verses to music and sings them to me. 

— You have a laugh together sometimes, do you? 

— Indeed we do. I write for what they call the 
“Comic Department ” of the paper now and then. If 
I did not get so tired of story-telling, I suppose I 
should be gayer than I am; but as it is, we two get a 
little fun out of my comic pieces. I begin them half- 
crying sometimes, but after they are done they amuse 
me. I don’t suppose my comic pieces are very laugh¬ 
able; at any rate the man who makes a business of 
writing me down says the last one I wrote is very 
melancholy reading, and that if it was only a little 
better perhaps some bereaved person might pick out 
a line or two that would do to put on a gravestone. 

— Well, that is hard, I must confess. Do let me 
see those lines which excite such sad emotions. 

— Will you read them very good-naturedly ? If you 
will, I will get the paper that has “Aunt Tabitha.” 
That is the one the fault-finder said produced such 
deep depression of feeling. It was written for the 
“ Comic Department. ” Perhaps it will make you cry, 
but it was n’t meant to. 

— I will finish my report this time with our Sche- 
herezade’s poem, hoping that any critic who deals with 
it will treat it with the courtesy due to all a young 
lady’s literary efforts. 

AUNT TABITHA. 

Whatever I do, and whatever I say, 

Aunt Tabitha tells me that is n’t the way ; 

When she was a girl (forty summers ago) 

Aunt Tabitha tells me they never did so. 


88 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


Dear aunt! If I only would take her advice ! 

But I like my own way, and I find it so nice ! 

And besides, I forget half the things I am told ; 

But they all will come back to me — when I am old. 

If a youth passes by, it may happen, no doubt, 

He may chance to look in as I chance to look out; 

She would never endure an impertinent stare, — 

It is horrid , she says, and I must n’t sit there. 

A walk in the moonlight has pleasures, I own, 

But it is n’t quite safe to be walking alone ; 

So I take a lad’s arm, — just for safety, you know, — 

But Aunt Tabitha tells me they did n’t do so. 

How wicked we are, and how good they were then ! 

They kept at arm’s length those detestable men; 

What an era of virtue she lived in ! — But stay — 

Were the men all such rogues in Aunt Tabitha’s day? 

If the men were so wicked, I ’ll ask my papa 
How he dared to propose to my darling mamma ; 

Was he like the rest of them ? Goodness! Who knows? 
And what shall I say if a wretch should propose ? 

I am thinking if aunt knew so little of sin, 

What a wonder Aunt Tabitha’s aunt must have been ! 

And her grand-aunt — it scares me — how shockingly sad 
That we girls of to-day are so frightfully bad ! 

A martyr will save us, and nothing else can ; 

Let me perish — to rescue some wretched young man ! 
Though when to the altar a victim I go, 

Aunt Tabitha’ll tell me she never did so ! 


IV. 

The old Master has developed one quality of late for 
which I am afraid I hardly gave him credit. He has 
turned out to be an excellent listener. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 89 

— I love to talk, — he said, — as a goose loves to 
swim. Sometimes I think it is because I am a goose. 
For I never talked much at any one time in my life 
without saying something or other I was sorry for. 

— You too! — said I.— Now that is very odd, for 
it is an experience I have habitually. I thought you 
were rather too much of a philosopher to trouble your¬ 
self about such small matters as to whether you had 
said just what you meant to or not; especially as you 
know that the person you talk to does not remember a 
word of what you said the next morning, but is think¬ 
ing, it is much more likely, of what she said, or how 
her new dress looked, or some other body’s new dress 
which made hers look as if it had been patched to¬ 
gether from the leaves of last November. That’s 
what she ’s probably thinking about. 

— She 1 — said the Master, with a look which it 
would take at least half a page to explain to the entire 
satisfaction of thoughtful readers of both sexes. 

— I paid the respect due to that most significant 
monosyllable, which, as the old Rabbi spoke it, with 
its tar gum of tone and expression, was not to be an¬ 
swered flippantly, but soberly, advisedly, and after a 
pause long enough for it to unfold its meaning in the 
listener’s mind. For there are short single words (all 
the world remembers Rachel’s Helas /) which are like 
those Japanese toys that look like nothing of any sig¬ 
nificance as you throw them on the water, but which 
after a little time open out into various strange and 
unexpected figures, and then you find that each little 
shred had a complicated story to tell of itself. 

— Yes, —said I, at the close of this silent interval, 
during which the monosyllable had been opening out 
its meanings, — She. When I think of talking, it is 


90 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of course with a woman. For talking at its best 
being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine 
quality of receptiveness; and where will you find this 
but in woman ? 

The Master laughed a pleasant little laugh, — not 
a harsh, sarcastic one, but playful, and tempered by 
so kind a look that it seemed as if every wrinkled line 
about his old eyes repeated, “God bless you,” as the 
tracings on the walls of the Alhambra repeat a sen¬ 
tence of the Koran. 

I said nothing, but looked the question, What are 
you laughing at? * 

— Why, I laughed because I could n’t help saying 
to myself that a woman whose mind was taken up 
with thinking how she looked, and how her pretty 
neighbor looked, wouldn’t have a great deal of 
thought to spare for all your fine discourse. 

— Come, now, — said I, — a man who contradicts 
himself in the course of two minutes must have a screw 
loose in his mental machinery. I never feel afraid 
that such a thing can happen to me, though it happens 
often enough when I turn a thought over suddenly, as 
you did that five-cent piece the other day, that it reads 
differently on its two sides. What I meant to say is 
something like this. A woman, notwithstanding she 
is the best of listeners, knows her business, and it is a 
woman’s business to please. I don’t say that it is not 
her business to vote, but I do say that a woman who 
does not please is a false note in the harmonies of na¬ 
ture. She may not have youth, or beauty, or even 
manner; but she must have something in her voice or 
expression, or both, which it makes you feel better 
disposed towards your race to look at or listen to. 
She knows that as well as we do; and her first ques- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 91 

tion after you have been talking your soul into her 
consciousness is, Did I please? A woman never for¬ 
gets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than 
an angel, any day. 

— This frightful speech of mine reached the ear of 
our Scheherezade, who said that it was perfectly 
shocking and that I deserved to be shown up as the 
outlaw in one of her bandit stories. 

Hush, my dear, — said the Lady, — you will have 
to bring John Milton into your story with our friend 
there, if you punish everybody who says naughty 
things like that. Send the little boy up to my cham¬ 
ber for Paradise Lost, if you please. He will find it 
lying on my table. The little old volume, — he can’t 
mistake it. 

So the girl called That Boy round and gave him the 
message; I don’t know why she should give it, but 
she did, and the Lady helped her out with a word or 
two. 

The little volume — its cover protected with soft 
white leather from a long kid glove, evidently sug¬ 
gesting the brilliant assemblies of the days when 
friends and fortune smiled — came presently and the 
Lady opened it. —You may read that, if you like, — 
she said, — it may show you that our friend is to be 
pilloried in good company. 

The Young Girl ran her eye along the passage the 
Lady pointed out, blushed, laughed, and slapped the 
book down as though she would have liked to box the 
ears of Mr. John Milton, if he had been a contempo¬ 
rary and fellow-contributor to the “Weekly Bucket.” 
— I won’t touch the thing, — she said. — He was a 
horrid man to talk so: and he had as many wives 
as Blue-Beard. 


92 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


— Fair play,—said the Master.—Bring me the 
book, my little fractional superfluity, — I mean you, 
my nursling, — my boy, if that suits your small High¬ 
ness better. 

The Boy brought the book. 

The old Master, not unfamiliar with the great epic, 
opened pretty nearly to the place, and very soon found 
the passage. He read aloud with grand scholastic 
intonation and in a deep voice that silenced the table 
as if a prophet had just uttered Thus saith the 
Lord: — 

“ So spake our sire, and by his countenance seemed 
Entering on studious thoughts abstruse ; which Eve 
Perceiving ” — 

went to water her geraniums, to make a short story 
of it, and left the two “conversationists,” to wit, the 
angel Raphael and the gentleman, — there was but 
one gentleman in society then, you know, — to talk it 
out. 

“ Yet went she not, as not with such discourse 
Delighted, or not capable her ear 
Of what was high ; such pleasure she reserved, 

Adam relating, she sole auditress ; 

Her husband the relater she preferred 
Before the angel , and of him to ask 
Chose rather ; he she knew would intermix 
Grateful digressions, and solve high dispute 
With conjugal caresses : from his lips 
Not words alone pleased her.” 

Everybody laughed, except the Capitalist, who was 
a little hard of hearing, and the Scarabee, whose life 
was too earnest for demonstrations of that kind. He 
had his eyes fixed on the volume, however, with eager 
interest. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 93 

— The p’int ’s carried, — said the Member of the 
Haouse. 

Will you let me look at that book a single minute? 
— said the Scarabee. I passed it to him, wondering 
what in the world he wanted of Paradise Lost. 

Dermestes lardarius , — he said, pointing to a place 
where the edge of one side of the outer cover had been 
slightly tasted by some insect. —Very fond of leather 
while they ’re in the larva state. 

— Damage the goods as bad as mice, — said the 
Salesman. 

— Eat half the binding off Folio 67,—said the 
Register of Deeds. Something did, anyhow, and it 
was n’t mice. Found the shelf covered with little 
hairy cases belonging to something or other that had 
no business there. 

Skins of the Dermestes lardarius, — said the Scar¬ 
abee, — you can always tell them by those brown 
hairy coats. That ’s the name to give them. 

— What good does it do to give ’em a name after 
they ’ve eat the binding off my folios? — asked the 
Register of Deeds. 

The Scarabee had too much respect for science to 
answer such a question as that; and the book, having 
served its purposes, was passed back to the Lady. 

I return to the previous question, — said I, — if our 
friend the Member of the House of Representatives 
will allow me to borrow the phrase. Womanly women 
are very kindly critics, except to themselves and now 
and then to their own sex. The less there is of sex 
about a woman, the more she is to be dreaded. But 
take a real woman at her best moment,— well dressed 
enough to be pleased with herself, not so resplendent 
as to be a show and a sensation, with those varied 


94 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


outside influences which set vibrating the harmonic 
notes of her nature stirring in the air about her, —* 
and what has social life to compare with one of those 
vital interchanges of thought and feeling with her that 
make an hour memorable? What can equal her tact, 
her delicacy, her subtlety of apprehension, her quick¬ 
ness to feel the changes of temperature as the warm 
and cool currents of talk blow by turns? At one mo- 
ment she is microscopically intellectual, critical, scru¬ 
pulous in judgment as an analyst’s balance, and the 
next as sympathetic as the open rose that sweetens 
the wind from whatever quarter it finds its way to her 
bosom. It is in the hospitable soul of a woman that 
a man forgets he is a stranger, and so becomes natural 
and truthful, at the same time that he is mesmerized 
by all those divine differences which make her a mys¬ 
tery and a bewilderment to — 

If you fire your popgun at me, you little chimpan¬ 
zee, I will stick a pin right through the middle of you 
and put you into one of this gentleman’s beetle-cases! 

I caught the imp that time, but what started him 
was more than I could guess. It is rather hard that 
this spoiled child should spoil such a sentence as that 
was going to be; but the wind shifted all at once, and 
the talk had to come round on another tack, or at 
least fall off a point or two from its course. 

— I ’ll tell you who I think are the best talkers in 
all probability, — said I to the Master, who, as I men¬ 
tioned, was developing interesting talent as a listener, 
— poets who never write verses. And there are a 
good many more of these than it would seem at first 
sight o I think you may say every young lover is a 
poet, to begin with. I don’t mean either that all 
young lovers are good talkers, — they have an elo- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 95 

quence all their own when they are with the beloved 
object, no doubt, emphasized after the fashion the 
solemn bard of Paradise refers to with such delicious 
humor in the passage we just heard,—but a little 
talk goes a good way in most of these cooing matches, 
and it wouldn’t do to report them too literally. 
What I mean is, that a man with the gift of musical 
and impassioned phrase (and love often lends that to a 
young person for a while), who “wreaks” it, to bor¬ 
row Byron’s word, on conversation as the natural out¬ 
let of his sensibilities and spiritual activities, is likely 
to talk better than the poet, who plays on the instru¬ 
ment of verse. A great pianist or violinist is rarely 
a great singer. To write a poem is to expend the 
vital force which would have made one brilliant for 
an hour or two, and to expend it on an instrument 
with more pipes, reeds, keys, stops, and pedals than 
the Great Organ that shakes New England every time 
it is played in full blast. 

Do you mean that it is hard work to write a poem ? 
— said the old Master. — I had an idea that a poem 
wrote itself, as it were, very often; that it came by 
influx, without voluntary effort; indeed, you have 
spoken of it as an inspiration rather than a result of 
volition. 

— Did you ever see a great ballet-dancer? — I 
asked him. 

— I have seen Taglioni, — he answered. — She used 
to take her steps rather prettily. I have seen the 
woman that danced the capstone on to Bunker Hill 
Monument, as Orpheus moved the rocks by music, — 
the Elssler woman,—Fanny Elssler. She would 
dance you a rigadoon or cut a pigeon’s wing for you 
very respectably. 


96 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

(Confound this old college book-worm, — he has 
seen everything!) 

Well, did these two ladies, dance as if it was hard 
work to them? 

— Why no, I should say they danced as if they 
liked it and couldn’t help dancing; they looked as if 
they felt so “corky” it was hard to keep them down. 

— And yet they had been through such work to get 
their limbs strong and flexible and obedient, that a 
cart-horse lives an easy life compared to theirs while 
they were in training. 

— The Master cut in just here—I had sprung the 
trap of a reminiscence. 

— When I was a boy, — he said, — some of the 
mothers in our small town, who meant that their chil¬ 
dren should know what was what as well as other 
people’s children, laid their heads together and got a 
dancing-master to come out from the city and give in¬ 
struction at a few dollars a quarter to the young folks 
of condition in the village. Some of their husbands 
were ministers and some were deacons, but the mo¬ 
thers knew what they were about, and they did n’t see 
any reason why ministers’ and deacons’ wives’ chil¬ 
dren should n’t have as easy manners as the sons and 
daughters of Belial. So, as I tell you, they got a 
dancing-master to come out to our place, — a man of 
good repute, a most respectable man, — madam (to the 
Landlady), you must remember the worthy old citizen, 
in his advanced age, going about the streets, a most 
gentlemanly bundle of infirmities, — only he always 
cocked his hat a little too much on one side, as they 
do here and there along the Connecticut River, and 
sometimes on our city sidewalks, when they’ve got a 
new beaver; they got him, I say, to give us boys and 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 97 

girls lessons in dancing and deportment. He was as 
gray and as lively as a squirrel, as I remember him, 
and used to spring up in the air and “cross his feet,” 
as we called it, three times before he came down. 
Well, at the end of each term there was what they 
called an “exhibition ball,” in which the scholars 
danced cotillons and country-dances; also something 
called a “gavotte,” and I think one or more walked a 
minuet. But all this is not what I wanted to say. 
At this exhibition ball he used to bring out a number 
of hoops wreathed with roses, of the perennial kind, 
by tho aid of which a number of amazingly compli¬ 
cated and startling evolutions were exhibited; and 
also his two daughters, who figured largely in these 
evolutions, and whose wonderful performances to us, 
who had not seen Miss Taglioni or Miss Elssler, were 
something quite bewildering, in fact, surpassing the 
natural possibilities of human beings. Their extra¬ 
ordinary powers were, however, accounted for by the 
following explanation, which was accepted in the 
school as entirely satisfactory. A certain little bone 
in the ankles of each of these young girls had been 
broken intentionally, secundum artem , at a very early 
age, and thus they had been fitted to accomplish these 
surprising feats which threw the achievements of the 
children who were left in the condition of the natural 
man into ignominious shadow. 

— Thank you, — said I, — you have helped out my 
illustration so as to make it better than I expected. 
Let me begin again. Every poem that is worthy of 
the name, no matter how easily it seems to be written, 
represents a great amount of vital force expended at 
some time or other. When you find a beach strewed 
with the shells and other spoils that belonged once to 


98 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


the deep sea, you know the tide has been there, and 
that the winds and waves have wrestled over its naked 
sands. And so, if I find a poem stranded in my soul 
and have nothing to do but seize it as a wrecker car¬ 
ries off the treasure he finds cast ashore, I know I 
have paid at some time for that poem with some in¬ 
ward commotion, were it only an excess of enjoyment, 
which has used up just so much of my vital capital. 
But besides all the impressions that furnished the 
stuff of the poem, there has been hard work to get the 
management of that wonderful instrument I spoke of, 

•— the great organ, language. An artist who works 
in marble or colors has them all to himself and his 
tribe, but the man who moulds his thought in verse 
has to employ the materials vulgarized by everybody’s 
use, and glorify them by his handling. I don’t know 
that you must break any bones in a poet’s mechanism 
before his thought can dance in rhythm, but read your 
Milton and see what training, what patient labor, it 
took before he could shape our common speech into 
his majestic harmonies. 

It is rather singular, but the same kind of thing has 
happened to me not very rarely before, as I suppose it 
has to most persons, that just when I happened to be 
thinking about poets and their conditions, this very 
morning, I saw a paragraph or two from a foreign 
paper which is apt to be sharp, if not cynical, relating 
to the same matter. I can’t help it; I want to have 
my talk about it, and if I say the same things that 
writer did, somebody else can have the satisfaction of 
saying I stole them all. 

[I thought the person whom I have called hypothet¬ 
ically the Man of Letters changed color a little and 
betrayed a certain awkward consciousness that some 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


99 


of us were looking at him or thinking of him; but 
I am a little suspicious about him and may do him 
wrong.] 

That poets are treated as privileged persons by 
their admirers and the educated public can hardly be 
disputed. That they consider themselves so there is 
no doubt whatever. On the whole, I do not know so 
easy a way of shirking all the civic and social and do¬ 
mestic duties, as to settle it in one’s mind that one is 
a poet. I have, therefore, taken great pains to ad¬ 
vise other persons laboring under the impression that 
they were gifted beings, destined to soar in the atmos¬ 
phere of song above the vulgar realities of earth, not 
to neglect any homely duty under the influence of that 
impression. The number of these persons is so great 
that if they were suffered to indulge their prejudice 
against every-day duties and labors, it would be a 
serious loss to the productive industry of the country. 
My skirts are clear (so far as other people are con¬ 
cerned) of countenancing that form of intellectual 
opium-eating in which rhyme takes the place of the 
narcotic. But what are you going to do when you 
find John Keats an apprentice to a surgeon or apoth¬ 
ecary? Isn’t it rather better to get another boy to 
sweep out the shop and shake out the powders and stir 
up the mixtures, and leave him undisturbed to write 
his Ode on a Grecian Urn or to a Nightingale? Oh 
yes, the critic I have referred to would say, if he is 
John Keats; but not if he is of a much lower grade, 
even though he be genuine, what there is of him. But 
the trouble is, the sensitive persons who belong to the 
lower grades of the poetical hierarchy do not know 
their own poetical limitations, while they do feel a 
natural unfitness and disinclination for many pursuits 


100 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

which young persons of the average balance of facul¬ 
ties take to pleasantly enough. What is forgotten is 
this, that every real poet, even of the humblest grade, 
is an artist . Now I venture to say that any painter 
or sculptor of real genius, though he may do nothing 
more than paint flowers and fruit, or carve cameos, is 
considered a privileged person. It is recognized per- 
fectly that to get his best work he must be insured the 
freedom from disturbances which the creative power 
absolutely demands, more absolutely perhaps in these 
slighter artists than in the great masters. His nerves 
must be steady for him to finish a rose-leaf or the 
fold of a nymph’s drapery in his best manner; and 
they will be unsteadied if he has to perform the hon¬ 
est drudgery which another can do for him quite as 
well. And it is just so with the poet, though he were 
only finishing an epigram; you must no more meddle 
roughly with him than you would shake a bottle of 
Chambertin and expect the “sunset glow” to redden 
your glass unclouded. On the other hand, it may be 
said that poetry is not an article of prime necessity, 
and potatoes are. There is a disposition in many per¬ 
sons just now to deny the poet his benefit of clergy, 
and to hold him no better than other people. Per¬ 
haps he is not, perhaps he is not so good, half the 
time; but he is a luxury, and if you want him you 
must pay for him, by not trying to make a drudge of 
him while he is all his lifetime struggling with the 
chills and heats of his artistic intermittent fever. 

There may have been some lesser interruptions dur¬ 
ing the talk I have reported as if it was a set speech, 
but this was the drift of what I said and should have 
said if the other man, in the Review I referred to, 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 101 

had not seen fit to meddle with the subject, as some 
fellow always does, just about the time when I am 
going to say something about it. The old Master lis¬ 
tened beautifully, except for cutting in once, as I told 
you he did. But now he had held in as long as it was 
in his nature to contain himself, and must have his 
say or go off in an apoplexy, or explode in some way. 

— I think you ’re right about the poets, — he said. 
— They are to common folks what repeaters are to 
ordinary watches. They carry music in their inside 
arrangements, but they want to be handled carefully 
or you put them out of order. And perhaps you 
must n’t expect them to be quite as good timekeepers 
as the professional chronometer watches that make a 
specialty of being exact within a few seconds a month. 
They think too much of themselves. So does every¬ 
body that considers himself as having a right to fall 
back on what he calls his idiosyncrasy. Yet a man 
has such a right, and it is no easy thing to adjust 
the private claim to the fair public demand on him. 
Suppose you are subject to tic douloureux , for in¬ 
stance. Every now and then a tiger that nobody can 
see catches one side of your face between his jaws and 
holds on till he is tired and lets go. Some concession 
must be made to you on that score, as everybody can 
see. It is fair to give you a seat that is not in the 
draught, and your friends ought not to find fault with 
you if you do not care to join a party that is going on 
a sleigh-ride. Now take a poet like Cowper. He 
had a mental neuralgia, a great deal worse in many 
respects than tic douloureux confined to the face. It 
was well that he was sheltered and relieved, by the 
cares of kind friends, especially those good women, 
from as many of the burdens of life as they could lift 


102 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

off from him. I am fair to the poets,—don’t you 
agree that I am? 

Why, yes, — I said, — you have stated the case 
fairly enough, a good deal as I sh )uld have put it my¬ 
self. 

— Now, then, — the Master continued, — I ’ll tell 
you what is necessary to all these artistic idiosyncra-* 
sies to bring them into good square human relations 
outside of the special province where their ways differ 
from those of other people. I am going to illustrate 
what I mean by a comparison. I don’t know, by the 
way, but you would be disposed to think and perhaps 
call me a wine-bibber on the strength of the freedom 
with which I deal with that fluid for the purposes of 
illustration. But I make mighty little use of it, ex¬ 
cept as it furnishes me an image now and then, as it 
did, for that matter, to the Disciples and their Mas¬ 
ter. In my younger days they used to bring up the 
famous old wines, the White-top, the Juno, the 
Eclipse, the Essex Junior, and the rest, in their old 
cob webbed, dusty bottles. The resurrection of one of 
these old sepulchred dignitaries had something of so¬ 
lemnity about it; it was like the disinterment of a 
king; the bringing to light of the Royal Martyr King 
Charles I., for instance, that Sir Henry Halford gave 
such an interesting account of. And the bottle seemed 
to inspire a personal respect; it was wrapped in a nap¬ 
kin and borne tenderly and reverently round to the 
guests, and sometimes a dead silence went before the 
first gush of its amber flood, and 

“ The boldest held his breath 
For a time.” 

But nowadays the precious juice of a long-dead vintage 
is transferred carefully into a cut-glass decanter, and 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 103 


stands side by side with the sherry from a corner gro¬ 
cery, which looks just as bright and apparently thinks 
just as well of itself. The old historic Madeiras, 
which have warmed the periods of our famous rhet¬ 
oricians of the past and burned in the impassioned 
eloquence of our earlier political demigods, have no¬ 
thing to mark them externally but a bit of thread, it 
may be, round the neck of the decanter, or a slip of 
ribbon, pink on one of them and blue on another. 

Go to a London club, — perhaps I might find 
something nearer home that would serve my turn, —~ 
but go to a London club, and there you will see the 
celebrities all looking alike modern, all decanted off 
from their historic antecedents and their costume of 
circumstance into the every-day aspect of the gentle¬ 
man of common cultivated society. That is Sir Coeur 
de Lion Plantagenet in the mutton-chop whiskers and 
the plain gray suit; there is the Laureate in a frock- 
coat like your own, and the leader of the House of 
Commons in a necktie you do not envy. That is the 
kind of thing you want to take the nonsense out of 
you. If you are not decanted off from yourself every 
few days or weeks, you will think it sacrilege to 
brush a cobweb from your cork by and by. O little 
fool, that has published a little book full of little 
poems or other sputtering tokens of an uneasy condi¬ 
tion, how I love you for the one soft nerve of special 
sensibility that runs through your exiguous organism, 
and the one phosphorescent particle in your unillumi¬ 
nated intelligence! But if you don’t leave your spun- 
sugar confectionery business once in a while, and 
come out among lusty men, — the bristly, pachyder¬ 
matous fellows that hew out the highways for the ma¬ 
terial progress of society, and the broad-shouldered, 


104 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


out-of-door men that fight for the great prizes of life, 
— you will come to think that the spun-sugar business 
is the chief end of man, and begin to feel and look 
as if you believed yourself as much above common 
people as that personage of whom Tourgueneff says 
that “he had the air of his own statue erected by 
national subscription.” 

— The Master paused and fell into a deep thinking 
fit, as he does sometimes. He had had his own say, 
it is true, but he had established his character as a 
listener to my own perfect satisfaction, for I, too, was 
conscious of having preached with a certain prolixity. 

— I am always troubled when I think of my very 
limited mathematical capacities. It seems as if every 
well-organized mind should be able to handle numbers 
and quantities through their symbols to an indefinite 
extent; and yet, I am puzzled by what seems to a 
clever boy with a turn for calculation as plain as 
counting his fingers. I don’t think any man feels 
well grounded in knowledge unless he has a good basis 
of mathematical certainties, and knows how to deal 
with them and apply them to every branch of know¬ 
ledge where they can come in to advantage. 

Our Young Astronomer is known for his mathemat¬ 
ical ability, and I asked him what he thought was the 
difficulty in the minds that are weak in that particular 
direction, while they may be of remarkable force in 
other provinces of thought, as is notoriously the case 
with some men of great distinction in science. 

The young man smiled and wrote a few letters and 
symbols on a piece of paper. — Can you see through 
that at once? — he said. 

I puzzled over it for some minutes and gave it up. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 105 

— He said, as I returned it to him, You have heard 
military men say that such a person had an eye for 
country , have n’t you? One man will note all the 
landmarks, keep the points of compass in his head, 
observe how the streams run, in short, carry a map in 
his brain of any region that he has marched or gal¬ 
loped through. Another man takes no note of any 
of these things; always follows somebody else’s lead 
when he can, and gets lost if he is left to himself; a 
mere owl in daylight. Just so some men have an eye 
for an equation , and would read at sight the one that 
you puzzled over. It is told of Sir Isaac Newton that 
he required no demonstration of the propositions in 
Euclid’s Geometry, but as soon as he had read the 
enunciation the solution or answer was plain at once. 
The power may be cultivated, but I think it is to 
a great degree a natural gift, as is the eye for color, 
as is the ear for music. 

— I think I could read equations readily enough, 
— I said, — if I could only keep my attention fixed 
on them; and I think I could keep my attention on 
them if I were imprisoned in a thinking-cell, such as 
the Creative Intelligence shapes for its studio when at 
its divinest work. 

The young man’s lustrous eyes opened very widely 
as he asked me to explain what I meant. 

— What is the Creator’s divinest work? — I asked. 

— Is there anything more divine than the sun; than 
a sun with its planets revolving about it, warming 
them, lighting them, and giving conscious life to the 
beings that move on them? 

—You agree, then, that conscious life is the grand 
aim and end of all this vast mechanism. Without life 
that could feel and enjoy, the splendors and creative 


106 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


energy would all be thrown away. You know Har¬ 
vey’s saying, omnia animalia ex ovo, — all animals 
come from an egg. You ought to know it, for the 
great controversy going on about spontaneous gen¬ 
eration has brought it into special prominence lately. 
Well, then, the ovum , the egg, is, to speak in human 
phrase, the Creator’s more private and sacred studio, 
for his magnum opus . Now, look at a hen’s egg, 
which is a convenient one to study, because it is large 
enough and built solidly enough to look at and handle 
easily. That would be the form I would choose for 
my thinking-cell. Build me an oval with smooth, 
translucent walls, and put me in the centre of it with 
Newton’s “Principia” or Kant’s “Kritik,” and I 
think I shall develop “an eye for an equation,” as 
you call it, and a capacity for an abstraction. 

But do tell me, — said the Astronomer, a little in¬ 
credulously, — what there is in that particular form 
which is going to help you to be a mathematician or 
a metaphysician? 

— It is n’t help I want, it is removing hindrances. 
I don’t want to see anything to draw off my attention. 
I don’t want a cornice, or an angle, or anything but 
a containing curve. I want diffused light and no 
single luminous centre to fix my eye, and so distract 
my mind from its one object of contemplation. The 
metaphysics of attention have hardly been sounded to 
their depths. The mere fixing the look on any sin¬ 
gle object for a long time may produce very strange 
effects. Gibbon’s well-known story of the monks of 
Mount Athos and their contemplative practice is often 
laughed over, but it has a meaning. They were to 
shut the door of the cell, recline the beard and chin 
on the breast, and contemplate the abdominal centre. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 107 


“ At first all will be dark and comfortless; but if you 
persevere day and night, you will feel an ineffable 
joy; and no sooner has the soul discovered the place of 
the heart, than it is involved in a mystic and ethereal 
light.” And Mr. Braid produces absolute anaesthe¬ 
sia, so that surgical operations can be performed 
without suffering to the patient, only by making him 
fix his eyes and his mind on a single object; and New¬ 
ton is said to have said, as you remember, “I keep the 
subject constantly before me, and wait till the first 
dawnings open slowly by little and little into a full 
and clear light.” These are different, but certainly 
very wonderful, instances of what can be done by 
attention. But now suppose that your mind is in its 
nature discursive, erratic, subject to electric attrac¬ 
tions and repulsions, volage; it may be impossible 
for you to compel your attention except by taking 
away all external disturbances. I think the poets 
have an advantage and a disadvantage as compared 
with the steadier-going people. Life is so vivid to 
the poet, that he is too eager to seize and exhaust 
its multitudinous impressions. Like Sindbad in the 
valley of precious stones, he wants to fill his pockets 
with diamonds, but, lo! there is a great ruby like a 
setting sun in its glory, and a sapphire that, like Bry¬ 
ant’s blue gentian, seems to have dropped from the 
cerulean walls of heaven, and a nest of pearls that 
look as if they might be unhatched angel’s eggs, and 
so he hardly knows what to seize, and tries for too 
many, and comes out of the enchanted valley with 
more gems than he can carry, and those that he lets 
fall by the wayside we call his poems. You may 
change the image a thousand ways to show you how 
hard it is to make a mathematician or a logician out 


108 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of a poet. He carries the tropics with him wherever 
he goes; he is in the true sense jilius naturce, and 
Nature tempts him, as she tempts a child walking 
through a garden where all the finest fruits are hang¬ 
ing over him and dropping round him, where 

The luscious clusters of the vine 
Upon (his) mouth do crush their wine, 

The nectarine and curious peach, 

Into (his) hands themselves do reach ; 

and he takes a bite out of the sunny side of this and 
the other, and, ever stimulated and never satisfied, is 
hurried through the garden, and, before he knows it, 
finds himself at an iron gate which opens outward, 
and leaves the place he knows and loves -— 

— For one he will perhaps soon learn to love and 
know better, — said the Master. — But I can help you 
out with another comparison, not quite so poetical as 
yours. Why did not you think of a railway-station, 
where the cars stop five minutes for refreshments? 
Is n’t that a picture of the poet’s hungry and hur¬ 
ried feast at the banquet of life? The traveller flings 
himself on the bewildering miscellany of delicacies 
spread before him, the various tempting forms of am¬ 
brosia and seducing draughts of nectar, with the same 
eager hurry and restless ardor that you describe in 
the poet. Dear me ! If it was n’t for All aboard! 
that summons of the deaf conductor which tears one 
away from his half-finished sponge-cake and coffee, 
how I, who do not call myself a poet, but only a ques¬ 
tioner, should have enjoyed a good long stop — say a 
couple of thousand years — at this way-station on the 
great railroad leading to the unknown terminus ! 

-— You say you are not a poet, — I said, after a lit- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 109 

tie pause, in which I suppose both of us were thinking 
where the great railroad would land us after carrying 
us into the dark tunnel, the farther end of which no 
man has seen and taken a return train to bring us 
news about it, — you say you are not a poet, and yet 
it seems to me you have some of the elements which 
go to make one. 

— I don’t think you mean to flatter me, — the Mas~ 
ter answered, — and, what is more, for I am not 
afraid to be honest with you, I don’t think you do 
flatter me. I have taken the inventory of my facul¬ 
ties as calmly as if I were an appraiser. I have some 
of the qualities, perhaps I may say many of the qual¬ 
ities, that make a man a poet, and yet I am not one. 
And in the course of a pretty wide experience of men 
— and women — (the Master sighed, I thought, but 
perhaps I was mistaken) — I have met a good many 
poets who were not rhymesters and a good many 
rhymesters who were not poets. So I am only one of 
the Voiceless, that I remember one of you singers 
had some verses about. I think there is a little music 
in me, but it has not found a voice, and it never will. 
If I should confess the truth, there is no mere earthly 
immortality that I envy so much as the poet’s. If 
your name is to live at all, it is so much more to have 
it live in people’s hearts than only in their brains ! I 
don’t know that one’s eyes fill with tears when he 
thinks of the famous inventor of logarithms, but a 
song of Burns’s or a hymn of Charles Wesley’s goes 
straight to your heart, and you can’t help loving both 
of them, the sinner as well as the saint. The works 
of other men live, but their personality dies out of 
their labors; the poet, who reproduces himself in his 
creation, as no other artist does or can, goes down to 


110 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

posterity with all his personality blended with what¬ 
ever is imperishable in his song. We see nothing of 
the bees that built the honeycomb and stored it with 
its sweets, but we can trace the veining in the wings 
of insects that flitted through the forests which are 
now coal-beds, kept unchanging in the amber that 
holds them; and so the passion of Sappho, the tender¬ 
ness of Simonides, the purity of holy George Herbert, 
the lofty contemplativeness of James Shirley, are be¬ 
fore us to-day as if they were living, in a few tears of 
amber verse. It seems, when one reads, 

** Sweet day ! so cool, so calm, so bright,” 
or, 

“ The glories of our birth and state,” 

as if it were not a very difficult matter to gain immor¬ 
tality, — such an immortality at least as a perishable 
language can give. A single lyric is enough, if one 
can only find in his soul and finish in his intellect one 
of those jewels fit to sparkle “on the stretched fore¬ 
finger of all time.” A coin, a ring, a string of verses. 
These last, and hardly anything else does. Every 
century is an overloaded ship that must sink at last 
with most of its cargo. The small portion of its crew 
that get on board the new vessel which takes them off 
don’t pretend to save a great many of the bulky arti¬ 
cles. But they must not and will not leave behind 
the hereditary jewels of the race; and if you have 
found and cut a diamond, were it only a spark with a 
single polished facet, it will stand a better chance 
of being saved from the wreck than anything, no 
matter what, that wants much room for stowage. 

The pyramids last, it is true, but most of them 
have forgotten their builders’ names. But the ring of 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. Ill 


Thothmes III., who reigned some fourteen hundred 
years before our era, before Homer sang, before the 
Argonauts sailed, before Troy was built, is in the 
possession of Lord Ashburnham, and proclaims the 
name of the monarch who wore it more than three 
thousand years ago. The gold coins with the head of 
Alexander the Great are some of them so fresh one 
might think they were newer than much of the silver 
currency we were lately handling. As we have been 
quoting from the poets this morning, I will follow 
the precedent, and give some lines from an epistle of 
Pope to Addison after the latter had written, but not 
yet published, his Dialogue on Medals. Some of 
these lines have been lingering in my memory for a 
great many years, but I looked at the original the 
other day and was so pleased with them that I got 
them by heart. I think you will say they are singu¬ 
larly pointed and elegant. 

“ Ambition sighed ; she found it vain to trust 
The faithless column and the crumbling bust; 

Huge moles, whose shadows stretched from shore to shore, 
Their ruins perished, and their place no more ! 

Convinced, she now contracts her vast design, 

And all her triumphs shrink into a coin. 

A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps, 

Beneath her palm here sad Judaea weeps ; 

Now scantier limits the proud arch confine, 

And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine ; 

A small Euphrates through the piece is rolled, 

And little eagles wave their wings in gold.” 

It is the same thing in literature. Write half a 
dozen folios full of other people’s ideas (as all folios 
are pretty sure to be), and you serve as ballast to the 
lower shelves of a library, about as like to be dis' 


112 THE POET AT THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 

turbed as tlie kentledge in the hold of a ship. Write 
a story, or a dozen stories, and your book will be in 
demand like an oyster while it is freshly opened, and 
after that— The highways of literature are spread 
over with the shells of dead novels, each of which has 
been swallowed at a mouthful by the public, and is 
done with. But write a volume of poems. No matter 
if they are all bad but one, if that one is very good. 
It will carry your name down to posterity like the 
ring of Thotlimes, like the coin of Alexander. I don’t 
suppose one would care a great deal about it a hun¬ 
dred or a thousand years after he is dead, but I don’t 
feel quite sure. It seems as if, even in heaven, King 
David might remember “The Lord is my Shepherd” 
with a certain twinge of earthly pleasure. But we 
don’t know, we don’t know. 

— What in the world can have become of That Boy 
and his popgun while all this somewhat extended ser¬ 
monizing was going on? I don’t wonder you ask, be¬ 
loved Reader, and I suppose I must tell you how we 
got on so long without interruption. Well, the plain 
truth is, the youngster was contemplating his gastric 
centre, like the monks of Mount Athos, but in a less 
happy state of mind than those tranquil recluses, in 
consequence of indulgence in the heterogeneous assort¬ 
ment of luxuries procured with the five-cent piece 
given him by the kind-hearted old Master. But you 
need not think I am going to tell you every time his 
popgun goes off, making a SelaJi of him whenever 
I want to change the subject. Occasionally he was 
ill-timed in his artillery practice and ignominiously 
rebuked, sometimes he was harmlessly playful and 
nobody minded him, but every now and then he came 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 113 

in so apropos that I am morally certain he gets a hint 
from somebody who watches the course of the conver¬ 
sation, and means through him to have a hand in it 
and stop any of us when we are getting prosy. But 
in consequence of That Boy’s indiscretion, we were 
without a check upon our expansiveness, and ran on 
in the way you have observed and may be disposed 
to find fault with. 

One other thing the Master said before we left the 
table, after our long talk of that day. 

— I have been tempted sometimes, — said he, — 
to envy the immediate triumphs of the singer. He 
enjoys all that praise can do for him and at the very 
moment of exerting his talent. And the singing wo¬ 
men ! Once in a while, in the course of my life, I 
have found myself in the midst of a tulip-bed of full- 
dressed, handsome women in all their glory, and when 
some one among them has shaken her gauzy wings, 
and sat down before the piano, and then, only giving 
the keys a soft touch now and then to support her 
voice, has warbled some sweet, sad melody intertwined 
with the longings or regrets of some tender-hearted 
poet, it has seemed to me that so to hush the rus¬ 
tling of the silks and silence the babble of the buds, 
as they call the chicks of a new season, and light up 
the flame of romance in cold hearts, in desolate ones, 
in old burnt-out ones, — like mine, I was going to say, 
but I won’t, for it isn’t so, and you may laugh to 
hear me say it is n’t so, if you like, — was perhaps 
better than to be remembered a few hundred years 
by a few perfect stanzas, when your gravestone is 
standing aslant, and your name is covered over with 
a lichen as big as a militia colonel’s cockade, and 


114 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


nobody knows or cares enough about you to scrape it 
off and set the tipsy old slate-stone upright again. 

— I said nothing in reply to this, for I was thinking 
of a sweet singer to whose voice I had listened in its 
first freshness, and which is now only an echo in my 
memory. If any reader of the periodical in which 
these conversations are recorded can remember so far 
back as the first year of its publication, he will find 
among the papers contributed by a friend not yet 
wholly forgotten a few verses, lively enough in their 
way, headed “The Boys.” The sweet singer was one 
of this company of college classmates, the constancy 
of whose friendship deserves a better tribute than the 
annual offerings, kindly meant, as they are, which 
for many years have not been wanting at their social 
gatherings. The small company counts many noted 
personages on its list, as is well known to those who 
are interested in such local matters, but it is not 
known that every fifth man of the whole number now 
living is more or less of a poet, — using that word 
with a generous breadth of significance. But it 
should seem that the divine gift it implies is more 
freely dispensed than some others, for while there are 
(or were, for one has taken his Last Degree) eight 
musical quills, there was but one pair of lips which 
could claim any special consecration to vocal melody. 
Not that one that should undervalue the half-recitative 
of doubtful barytones, or the brilliant escapades of 
slightly unmanageable falsettos , or the concentrated 
efforts of the proprietors of two or three effective 
notes, who may be observed lying in wait for them, 
and coming down on them with all their might, and 
the look on their countenances of “I too am a singer.” 
But the voice that led all, and that all loved to lis- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 115 

ten to, the voice that was at once full, rich, sweet, pen¬ 
etrating, expressive, whose ample overflow drowned 
all the imperfections and made up for all the short¬ 
comings of the others, is silent henceforth forevermore 
for all earthly listeners. 

And these were the lines that one of “The Boys,” 
as they have always called themselves for ever so many 
years, read at the first meeting after the voice which 
had never failed them was hushed in the stillness of 
death. 


J. A. 

1871 . 

One memory trembles on our lips : 

It throbs in every breast ; 

In tear-dimmed eyes, in mirth’s eclipse, 
The shadow stands confessed. 

O silent voice, that cheered so long 
Our manhood’s marching day, 
Without thy breath of heavenly song, 
How weary seems the way ! 

Vain every pictured phrase to tell 
Our sorrowing hearts’ desire ; 

The shattered harp, the broken shell, 
The silent unstrung lyre ; 

For youth was round us while he sang ; 

It glowed in every tone ; 

With bridal chimes the echoes rang, 
And made the past our own. 

O blissful dream ! Our nursery joys 
We know must have an end, 

But love and friendship^ broken toys 
May God’s good angels mend! 


116 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

The cheering smile, the voice of mirth 
And laughter’s gay surprise 
That please the children born of earth, 

Why deem that Heaven denies ? 

Methinks in that refulgent sphere 
That knows not sun or moon, 

An earth-born saint might long to hear 
One verse of “ Bonny Doon ” ; 

Or walking through the streets of gold 
In Heaven’s unclouded light, 

His lips recall the song of old 
And hum “ The sky is bright.” 


And can we smile when thou art dead ? 

Ah, brothers, even so ! 

The rose of summer will be red, 

In spite of winter’s snow. 

Thou wouldst not leave us all in gloom 
Because thy song is still, 

Nor blight the banquet-garland’s bloom 
With grief’s untimely chill. 

The sighing wintry winds complain, — 
The singing bird has flown, — 

Hark ! heard I not that ringing strain, 
That clear celestial tone ? 

How poor these pallid phrases seem, 
How weak this tinkling line, 

As warbles through my waking dream 
That angel voice of thine ! 

Thy requiem asks a sweeter lay ; 

It falters on my tongue ; 

For all we vainly strive to say, 

Thou shouldst thyself have sung ! 



THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 117 


Y. 

I fear that I have done injustice in my conversation 
and my report of it to a most worthy and promising 
young man whom I should he very sorry to injure in 
any way. Dr. Benjamin Franklin got hold of my 
account of my visit to him, and complained that I had 
made too much of the expression he used. He did 
not mean to say that he thought I was suffering from 
the rare disease he mentioned, but only that the color 
reminded him of it. It was true that he had shown 
me various instruments, among them one for exploring 
the state of a part by means of a puncture, but he did 
npt propose to make use of it upon my person. In 
short, I had colored the story so as to make him look 
ridiculous. 

— I am afraid I did, —I said, —but wasn’t I col¬ 
ored myself so as to look ridiculous? I ’ve heard it 
said that people with the jaundice see everything yel¬ 
low; perhaps I saw things looking a little queerly, 
with that black and blue spot I couldn’t account for 
threatening to make a colored man and brother of me. 
But I am sorry if I have done you any wrong. I 
hope you won’t lose any patients by my making a lit¬ 
tle fun of your meters and scopes and contrivances. 
They seem so odd to us outside people. Then the 
idea of being bronzed all over was such an alarming 
suggestion. But I did not mean to damage your 
business, which I trust is now considerable, and I 
shall certainly come to you again if I have need of the 
services of a physician. Only don’t mention the 
names of any diseases in English or Latin before me 
next time. I dreamed about cutis cznea half the 
night after I came to see you. 


118 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


Dr. Benjamin took my apology very pleasantly. 
He did not want to be toucby about it, be said, but 
he had his way to make in the world, and found it 
a little hard at first, as most young men did. People 
were afraid to trust them, no matter how much they 
knew. One of the old doctors asked him to come 
in and examine a patient’s heart for him the other 
day. He went with him accordingly, and when they 
stood by the bedside, he offered his stethoscope to the 
old doctor. The old doctor took it and put the 
wrong end to his ear and the other to the patient’s 
chest, and kept it there about two minutes, looking 
all the time as wise as an old owl. Then he, Dr. 
Benjamin, took it and applied it properly, and made out 
where the trouble was in no time at all. But what 
was the use of a young man’s pretending to know any¬ 
thing in the presence of an old owl? I saw by their 
looks, he said, that they all thought I used the stetho¬ 
scope wrong end up, and was nothing but a ’prentice 
hand to the old doctor. 

— I am much pleased to say that since Dr. Benja¬ 
min has had charge of a dispensary district, and been 
visiting forty or fifty patients a day, I have reason to 
think he has grown a great deal more practical than 
when I made my visit to his office. I think I was 
probably one of his first patients, and that he natu¬ 
rally made the most of me. But my second trial was 
much more satisfactory. I got an ugly cut from the 
carving-knife in an affair with a goose of iron consti¬ 
tution in which I came off second best. I at once 
adjourned with Dr. Benjamin to his small office, and 
put myself in his hands. It was astonishing to see 
what a little experience of miscellaneous practice had 
done for him. He did not ask me any more questions 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 119 

about my hereditary predispositions on the paternal 
and maternal sides. He did not examine me with the 
stethoscope or the laryngoscope. He only strapped 
up my cut, and informed me that it would speedily 
get well by the “first intention,” — an odd phrase 
enough, but sounding much less formidable than cutis 
cenea . 

I am afraid I have had something of the French 
prejudice which embodies itself in the maxim 44 young 
surgeon, old physician.” But a young physician who 
has been taught by great masters of the profession, in 
ample hospitals, starts in his profession knowing more 
than some old doctors have learned in a lifetime. 
Give him a little time to get the use of his wits in 
emergencies, and to know the little arts that do so 
much for a patient’s comfort,—just as you give a 
young sailor time to get his sea-legs on and teach his 
stomach to behave itself, — and he will do well enough. 

The old Master knows ten times more about this 
matter and about all the professions, as he does about 
everything else, than I do. My opinion is that he 
has studied two, if not three, of these professions in 
a regular course. I don’t know that he has ever 
preached, except as Charles Lamb said Coleridge al¬ 
ways did, for when he gets the bit in his teeth he runs 
away with the conversation, and if he only took a text 
his talk would be a sermon; but if he has not 
preached, he has made a study of theology, as many 
laymen do. I know he has some shelves of medical 
books in his library, and has ideas on the subject of 
the healing art. He confesses to having attended law 
lectures and having had much intercourse with law¬ 
yers. So he has something to say on almost any sub¬ 
ject that happens to come up. I told him my story 


120 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


about my visit to the young doctor, and asked him 
what he thought of youthful practitioners in general 
and of Dr. Benjamin in particular. 

I ’ll tell you what,—the Master said,—I know 
something about these young fellows that come home 
with their heads full of “ science,” as they call it, and 
stick up their signs to tell people they know how to 
cure their headaches and stomach-aches. Science is 
a first-rate piece of furniture for a man’s upper cham¬ 
ber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. 
But if a man has n’t got plenty of good common sense, 
the more science he has the worse for his patient. 

— I don’t know that I see exactly how it is worse 
for the patient, — I said. 

—Well, I ’ll tell you, and you ’ll find it’s a mighty 
simple matter. When a person is sick, there is al¬ 
ways something to be done for him, and done at once. 
If it is only to open or shut a window, if it is only 
to tell him to keep on doing just what he is doing 
already, it wants a man to bring his mind right 
down to the fact of the present case and its immedi¬ 
ate needs. Now the present case, as the doctor sees 
it, is just exactly such a collection of paltry individ¬ 
ual facts as never was before, — a snarl and tangle 
of special conditions which it is his business to wind 
as much thread out of as he can. It is a good deal as 
when a painter goes to take the portrait of any sitter 
who happens to send for him. He has seen just such 
noses and just such eyes and just such mouths, but he 
never saw exactly such a face before, and his business 
is with that and no other person’s, —with the features 
of the worthy father of a family before him, and not 
with the portraits he has seen in galleries or books, 
or Mr. Copley’s grand pictures of the fine old Tories, 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 121 

or tlie Apollos and Jupiters of Greek sculpture. It 
is the same thing with the patient. His disease has 
features of its own; there never was and never will he 
another case in all respects exactly like it. If a doctor 
has science without common sense, he treats a fever, 
but not this man’s fever. If he has common sense 
without science, he treats this man’s fever without 
knowing the general laws that govern all fevers and 
all vital movements. I ’ll tell you what saves these 
last fellows. They go for weakness whenever they 
see it, with stimulants and strengthened, and they go 
for overaction, heat, and high pulse, and the rest, 
with cooling and reducing remedies. That is three 
quarters of medical practice. The other quarter wants 
science and common sense too. But the men that 
have science only, begin too far back, and, before they 
get as far as the case in hand, the patient has very 
likely gone to visit his deceased relatives. You re¬ 
member Thomas Prince’s “Chronological History of 
New England,” I suppose? He begins, you recollect, 
with Adam, and has to work down five thousand six 
hundred and twenty-four years before he gets to the 
Pilgrim fathers and the Mayflower. It was all very 
well, only it did n’t belong there, but got in the way 
of something else. So it is with “ science ” out of 
place. By far the larger part of the facts of structure 
and function you find in the books of anatomy and 
physiology have no immediate application to the daily 
duties of the practitioner. You must learn systemat¬ 
ically, for all that; it is the easiest way and the only 
way that takes hold of the memory, except mere em¬ 
pirical repetition, like that of the handicraftsman. 
Did you ever see one of those Japanese figures with 
the points for acupuncture marked upon it? 


122 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


— I had to own that my schooling had left out 
that piece of information. 

Well, I ’ll tell yon about it. You see they have a 
way of pushing long, slender needles into you for the 
cure of rheumatism and other complaints, and it seems 
there is a choice of spots for the operation, though it is 
very strange how little mischief it does in a good many 
places one would think unsafe to meddle with. So 
they had a doll made, and marked the spots where 
they had put in needles without doing any harm. 
They must have had accidents from sticking the nee¬ 
dles into the wrong places now and then, but I sup¬ 
pose they did n’t say a great deal about those. After 
a time, say a few centuries of experience, they had 
their doll all spotted over with safe places for sticking 
in the needles. That is their way of registering prac¬ 
tical knowledge. We, on the other hand, study the 
structure of the body as a whole, systematically, and 
have no difficulty at all in remembering the track of 
the great vessels and nerves, and knowing just what 
tracks will be safe and what unsafe. It is just the 
same thing with the geologists. Here is a man close 
by us boring for water through one of our ledges, be¬ 
cause somebody else got water somewhere else in that 
way; and a person who knows geology or ought to 
know it, because he has given his life to it, tells me he 
might as well bore there for lager-beer as for water. 

— I thought we had had enough of this particular 
matter, and that I should like to hear what the Master 
had to say about the three professions he knew some¬ 
thing about, each compared with the others. 

What is your general estimate of doctors, lawyers, 
and ministers? — said I. 

— Wait a minute, till I have got through with your 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 123 


first question, — said the Master. — One thing at a 
time. You asked me about the young doctors, and 
about our young doctor. They come home tres bien 
chausses , as a Frenchman would say, mighty well 
shod with professional knowledge. But when they 
begin walking round among their poor patients, — 
they don’t commonly start with millionnaires,—they 
find that their new shoes of scientific acquirements 
have got to be broken in just like a pair of boots or 
brogans. I don’t know that I have put it quite 
strong enough. Let me try again. You’ve seen 
those fellows at the circus that get up on horseback 
so big that you wonder how they could climb into the 
saddle. But pretty soon they throw off their outside 
coat, and the next minute another one, and then the 
one under that, and so they keep peeling off one gar¬ 
ment after another till people begin to look queer and 
think they are going too far for strict propriety. 
Well, that is the way a fellow with a real practical 
turn serves a good many of his scientific wrappers, — 
flings ’em off for other people to pick up, and goes 
right at the work of curing stomach-aches and all the 
other little mean unscientific complaints that make up 
the larger part of every doctor’s business. I think 
our Dr. Benjamin is a worthy young man, and if you 
are in need of a doctor at any time I hope you will go 
to him; and if you come off without harm, I will — 
recommend some other friend to try him. 

— I thought he was going to say he would try him 
in his own person, but the Master is not fond of com¬ 
mitting himself. 

Now, I will answer your other question, he said. — 
The lawyers are the cleverest men, the ministers are 
the most learned, and the doctors are the most sensible. 


124 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


The lawyers are a picked lot, “first scholars” and 
the like, but their business is as unsympathetic as 
Jack Ketch’s. There is nothing humanizing in their 
relations with their fellow-creatures. They go for the 
side that retains them. They defend the man they 
know to be a rogue, and not very rarely throw suspi¬ 
cion on the man they know to be innocent. Mind you, 
I am not finding fault with them; every side of a case 
has a right to the best statement it admits of; but I 
say it does not tend to make them sympathetic. 
Suppose in a case of Fever vs. Patient, the doctor 
should side with either party according to whether 
the old miser or his expectant heir was his employer. 
Suppose the minister should side with the Lord or the 
Devil, according to the salary offered and other inci¬ 
dental advantages, where the soul of a sinner was in 
question. You can see what a piece of work it would 
make of their sympathies. But the lawyers are 
quicker witted than either of the other professions, 
and abler men generally. They are good-natured, or, 
if they quarrel, their quarrels are above-board. I 
don’t think they are as accomplished as the ministers, 
but they have a way of cramming with special know¬ 
ledge for a case which leaves a certain shallow sedi¬ 
ment of intelligence in their memories about a good 
many things. They are apt to talk law in mixed 
company, and they have a way of looking round when 
they make a point, as if they were addressing a jury, 
that is mighty aggravating, as I once had occasion to 
see when one of ’em, and a pretty famous one, put me 
on the witness-stand at a dinner-party once. 

The ministers come next in point of talent. They 
are far more curious and widely interested outside 
of their own calling than either of the other profes- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 125 

sions. I like to talk with ’em. They are interest¬ 
ing men, full of good feelings, hard workers, always 
foremost in good deeds, and on the whole the most 
efficient civilizing class, working downwards from 
knowledge to ignorance, that is, — not so much up¬ 
wards, perhaps, — that we have. The trouble is, that 
so many of ’em work in harness, and it is pretty sure 
to chafe somewhere. They feed us on canned meats 
mostly. They cripple our instincts and reason, and 
give us a crutch of doctrine. I have talked with a 
great many of ’em of all sorts of belief, and I don’t 
think they are quite so easy in their minds, the greater 
number of them, nor so clear in their convictions, as 
one would think to hear ’em lay down the law in the 
pulpit. They used to lead the intelligence of their 
parishes; now they do pretty well if they keep up 
with it, and they are very apt to lag behind it. Then 
they must have a colleague. The old minister thinks 
he can hold to his old course, sailing right into the 
wind’s eye of human nature, as straight as that fa¬ 
mous old skipper John Bunyan; the young minister 
falls off three or four points and catches the breeze that 
left the old man’s sails all shivering. By and by the 
congregation will get ahead of him , and then it must 
have another new skipper. The priest holds his own 
pretty well; the minister is coming down every gener¬ 
ation nearer and nearer to the common level of the 
useful citizen, — no oracle at all, but a man of more 
than average moral instincts, who, if he knows any¬ 
thing, knows how little he knows. The ministers are 
good talkers, only the struggle between nature and 
grace makes some of ’em a little awkward occasion¬ 
ally. The women do their best to spoil ’em, as they 
do the poets; you find it very pleasant to be spoiled, 


126 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

no doubt; so do they. Now and then one of ’em 
goes over the dam; no wonder, they ’re always in the 
rapids. 

By this time our three ladies had their faces all 
turned toward the speaker, like the weathercocks in 
a northeaster, and I thought it best to switch off the 
talk on to another rail. 

How about the doctors? — I said. 

— Theirs is the least learned of the professions, in 
this country at least. They have not half the general 
culture of the lawyers, nor a quarter of that of the 
ministers. I rather think, though, they are more 
agreeable to the common run of people than the men 
with black coats or the men with green bags. People 
can swear before ’em if they want to, and they can’t 
very well before ministers. I don’t care whether they 
want to swear or not, they don’t want to be on their 
good behavior. Besides, the minister has a little 
smack of the sexton about him; he comes when people 
are in extremis , but they don’t send for him every 
time they make a slight moral slip, — tell a lie for 
instance, or smuggle a silk dress through the custom¬ 
house ; but they call in the doctor when a child is cut¬ 
ting a tooth or gets a splinter in its finger. So it 
does n’t mean much to send for him, only a pleasant 
chat about the news of the day; for putting the baby 
to rights doesn’t take long. Besides, everybody 
doesn’t like to talk about the next world; people are 
modest in their desires, and find this world as good 
as they deserve; but everybody loves to talk physic. 
Everybody loves to hear of strange cases; people are 
eager to tell the doctor of the wonderful cures they 
have heard of; they want to know what is the matter 
with somebody or other who is said to be suffering 


THE POET AT THE BEE AKF A ST-TABLE. 127 

from “a complication of diseases,” and above all to 
get a hard name, Greek or Latin, for some complaint 
which sounds altogether too commonplace in plain 
English. If you will only call a headache a Cepha¬ 
lalgia , it acquires dignity at once, and a patient be¬ 
comes rather proud of it. So I think doctors are 
generally welcome in most companies. 

In old times, when people were more afraid of the 
Devil and of witches than they are now, they liked to 
have a priest or a minister somewhere near to scare 
’em off; but nowadays, if you could find an old woman 
that would ride round the room on a broomstick, Bar- 
num would build an amphitheatre to exhibit her in; 
and if he could come across a young imp, with hoofs, 
tail, and budding horns, a lineal descendant of one of 
those “daemons” which the good people of Gloucester 
fired at, and were fired at by “for the best part of a 
month together ” in the year 1692, the great showman 
would have him at any cost for his museum or me¬ 
nagerie. Men are cowards, sir, and are driven by fear 
as the sovereign motive. Men are idolaters, and want 
something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw them¬ 
selves down before; they always did, they always will; 
and if you don’t make it of wood, you must make it 
of words, which are just as much used for idols as 
promissory notes are used for values. The ministers 
have a hard time of it without bell and book and holy 
water; they are dismounted men in armor since Luther 
cut their saddle-girths, and you can see they are qui¬ 
etly taking off one piece of iron after another until 
some of the best of ’em are fighting the devil (not the 
zoological Devil with the big D) with the sword of 
the Spirit, and precious little else in the way of wea¬ 
pons of offence or defence. But we could n’t get on 


128 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

without the spiritual brotherhood, whatever became of 
our special creeds. There is a genius for religion, 
just as there is for painting or sculpture. It is half- 
sister to the genius for music, and has some of the 
features which remind us of earthly love. But it lifts 
us all by its mere presence. To see a good man and 
hear his voice once a week would be reason enough 
for building churches and pulpits. — The Master 
stopped all at once, and after about half 2 minute 
laughed his pleasant laugh. 

What is it? — I asked him. 

I was thinking of the great coach and team that is 
carrying us fast enough, I don’t know but too fast, 
somewhere or other. The I). D.’s used to be the 
leaders, but now they are the wheel-horses. It’s 
pretty hard to tell how much they pull, but we know 
they can hold back like the — 

— When we ’re going down hill, — I said, as 
neatly as if I had been a High-Church curate trained 
to snap at the last word of the response, so that you 
could n’t wedge in the tail of a comma between the 
end of the congregation’s closing syllable and the be¬ 
ginning of the next petition. They do it well, but it 
always spoils my devotion. To save my life, I can’t 
help watching them, as I watch to see a duck dive 
at the flash of a gun, and that is not what I go 
to church for. It is a juggler’s trick, and there is 
no more religion in it than in catching a ball on 
the fly. 

I was looking at our Scheherezade the other day, 
and thinking what a pity it was that she had never 
had fair play in the world. I wish I knew more of 
her history. There is one way of learning it, — mak- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 129 


ing love to her. I wonder whether she would let me 
and like it. It is an absurd thing, and I ought not 
to confess, but I tell you and you only, Beloved, my 
heart gave a perceptible jump when it heard the whis¬ 
per of that possibility overhead ! Every day has its 
ebb and flow, but such a thought as that is like one 
of those tidal waves they talk about, that rolls in like 
a great wall and overtops and drowns out all your 
landmarks, and you, too, if you don’t mind what you 
are about and stand ready to run or climb or swim. 
Not quite so bad as that, though, this time. I take 
an interest in our Scheherezade. I am glad she 
did n’t smile on the pipe and the Bohemian-looking 
fellow that finds the best part of his life in sucking at 
it. A fine thing, is n’t it, for a young woman to 
marry a man who will hold her 

“ Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse,” 

but not quite so good as his meerschaum ? It is n’t 
for me to throw stones, though, who have been a Ni¬ 
cotian a good deal more than half my days. Cigar- 
stump out now, and consequently have become very 
bitter on more persevering sinners. I say I take an 
interest in our Scheherezade, but I rather think it is 
more paternal than anything else, though my heart 
did give that jump. It has jumped a good many 
times without anything very remarkable coming of it. 

This visit to the Observatory is going to bring us 
all, or most of us, together in a new way, and it 
would n’t be very odd if some of us should become 
better acquainted than we ever have been. There is 
a chance for the elective affinities. What tremendous 
forces they are, if two subjects of them come within 
range! There lies a bit of iron. All the dynamic 


130 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

agencies of the universe are pledged to hold it just in 
that position, and there it will lie until it becomes a 
heap of red-brown rust. But see, I hold a magnet to 
it, — it looks to you like just such a bit of iron as the 
other, — and lo ! it leaves them all, — the tugging of 
the mighty earth; of the ghostly moon that walks in 
white, trailing the snaky waves of the ocean after her; 
of the awful sun, twice as large as a sphere that the 
whole orbit of the moon would but just girdle, — it 
leaves the wrestling of all their forces, which are at 
a dead lock with each other, all fighting for it, and 
springs straight to the magnet. What a lucky thing 
it is for well-conducted persons that the maddening 
elective affinities don’t come into play in full force 
very often! 

I suppose I am making a good deal more of our 
prospective visit than it deserves. It must be because 
I have got it into my head that we are bound to have 
some kind of sentimental outbreak amongst us, and 
that this will give a chance for advances on the part 
of anybody disposed in that direction. A little 
change of circumstance often hastens on a movement 
that has been long in preparation. A chemist will 
show you a flask containing a clear liquid; he will 
give it a shake or two, and the whole contents of the 
flask will become solid in an instant. Or you may 
lay a little heap of iron-filings on a sheet of paper 
with a magnet beneath it, and they will be quiet 
enough as they are, but give the paper a slight jar 
and the specks of metal will suddenly find their way 
to the north or the south pole of the magnet and take 
a definite shape not unpleasing to contemplate, and 
curiously illustrating the laws of attraction, antago¬ 
nism, and average, by which the worlds, conscious and 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 131 


unconscious, are alike governed. So with our little 
party, with any little party of persons who have got 
used to each other; leave them undisturbed and they 
might remain in a state of equilibrium forever; but 
let anything give them a shake or a jar, and the long- 
striving but hindered affinities come all at once into 
play and finish the work of a year in five minutes. 

We were all a good deal excited by the anticipation 
of this visit. The Capitalist, who for the most part 
keeps entirely to himself, seemed to take an interest 
in it and joined the group in the parlor who were 
making arrangements as to the details of the eventful 
expedition, which was very soon to take place. The 
Young Girl was full of enthusiasm; she is one of those 
young persons, I think, who are impressible, and of 
necessity depressible when their nervous systems are 
overtasked, but elastic, recovering easily from mental 
worries and fatigues, and only wanting a little change 
of their conditions to get back their bloom and cheer¬ 
fulness. I could not help being pleased to see how 
much of the child was left in her, after all the drudg¬ 
ery she had been through. What is there that youth 
will not endure and triumph over? Here she was; 
her story for the week was done in good season; she 
had got rid of her villain by a new and original ca¬ 
tastrophe; she had received a sum of money for an 
extra string of verses,— painfully small, it is true, but 
it would buy her a certain ribbon she wanted for the 
great excursion; and now her eyes sparkled so that 
I forgot how tired and hollow they sometimes looked 
when she had been sitting up half the night over her 
endless manuscript. 

The morning of the day we had looked forward to 
promised as good an evening as we could wish. The 


132 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


Capitalist, whose courteous and bland demeanor would 
never have suggested the thought that he was a robber 
and an enemy of his race, who was to be trampled 
underfoot by the beneficent regenerators of the social 
order as preliminary to the universal reign of peace 
on earth and good-will to men, astonished us all with 
1 a proposal to escort the three ladies and procure a car¬ 
riage for their conveyance. The Lady thanked him 
in a very cordial way, but said she thought nothing 
of the walk. The Landlady looked disappointed at 
this answer. For her part she was on her legs all day 
and should be glad enough to ride, if so be he was 
going to have a carriage at any rate. It would be a 
sight pleasanter than to trudge afoot, but she would n’t 
have him go to the expense on her account. — Don’t 
mention it, mac(am, — said the Capitalist, in a gen¬ 
erous glow of enthusiasm. As for the Young Girl, 
she did not often get a chance for a drive, and liked 
the idea of it for its own sake, as children do, and 
she insisted that the Lady should go in the carriage 
with her. So it was settled that the Capitalist should 
take the three ladies in a carriage, and the rest of us 
go on foot. 

The evening behaved as it was bound to do on so 
momentous an occasion. The Capitalist was dressed 
with almost suspicious nicety. We pedestrians could 
not help waiting to see them off, and I thought he 
handed the ladies into the carriage with the air of a 
French marquis. 

I walked with Dr. Benjamin and That Boy, and we 
had to keep the little imp on the trot a good deal of 
the way in order not to be too long behind the car¬ 
riage party. The Member of the Haouse walked with 
our two dummies, — I beg their pardon, I mean the 
Register of Deeds and the Salesman. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 133 

The Man of Letters, hypothetically so called, 
walked by himself, smoking a short pipe which was 
very far from suggesting the spicy breezes that blow 
soft from Ceylon’s isle. 

I suppose everybody who reads this paper has vis- 
ited one or more observatories, and of course knows 
all about them. But as it may hereafter be translated 
into some foreign tongue and circulated among bar¬ 
barous, but rapidly improving people, people who 
have as yet no astronomers among them, it may be 
well to give a little notion of what kind of place an 
observatory is. 

To begin then: a deep and solid stone foundation 
is laid in the earth, and a massive pier of masonry is 
built up on it. A .heavy block of granite forms the 
summit of this pier, and on this block rests the equa¬ 
torial telescope. Around this structure a circular 
tower is built, with two or more floors which come 
close up to the pier, but do not touch it at any point. 
It is crowned with a hemispherical dome, which, I may 
remark, half realizes the idea of my egg-shell studio. 
This dome is cleft from its base to its summit by a 
narrow, ribbon-like opening, through which is seen 
the naked sky. It revolves on cannon-balls, so easily 
that a single hand can move it, and thus the opening 
may be turned towards any point of the compass. 
As the telescope can be raised or depressed so as to 
be directed to any elevation from the horizon to the 
zenith, and turned around the entire circle with the 
dome, it can be pointed to any part of the heavens. 
But as the star or other celestial object is always 
apparently moving, in consequence of the real rota¬ 
tory movement of the earth, the telescope is made to 
follow it automatically by an ingenious clock-work 


134 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

arrangement. No place, short of the temple of the 
living God, can be more solemn. The jars of the 
restless life around it do not disturb the serene in¬ 
telligence of the half-reasoning apparatus. Nothing 
can stir the massive pier but the shocks that shake 
the solid earth itself. When an earthquake thrills the 
planet, the massive turret shudders with the shudder¬ 
ing rocks on which it rests, but it pays no heed to the 
wildest tempest, and while the heavens are convulsed 
and shut from the eye of the far-seeing instrument it 
waits without a tremor for the blue sky to come back. 
It is the type of the true and steadfast man of the 
Roman poet, whose soul remains unmoved while the 
firmament cracks and tumbles about him. It is the 
material image of the Christian; his heart resting on 
the Rock of Ages, his eye fixed on the brighter world 
above. 

I did not say all this while we were looking round 
among these wonders, quite new to many of us. 
People don’t talk in straight-off sentences like that. 
They stumble and stop, or get interrupted, change a 
word, begin again, miss connections of verbs and 
nouns, and so on, till they blunder out their meaning. 
But I did let fall a word or two, showing the impres¬ 
sion the celestial laboratory produced upon me. I 
rather think I must own to the “Rock of Ages ” com¬ 
parison. Thereupon the “Man of Letters,” so called, 
took his pipe from his mouth, and said that he did n’t 
go in “for sentiment and that sort of thing. Gush 
was played out.” 

The Member of the Haouse, who, as I think, is not 
wanting in that homely good sense which one often 
finds in plain people from the huckleberry districts, 
but who evidently supposes the last speaker to be what 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. L35 

he calls “a tahlented malm,” looked a little puzzled. 
My remark seemed natural and harmless enough to 
him, I suppose, hut I had been distinctly snubbed, 
and the Member of the Haouse thought I must defend 
myself, as is customary in the deliberative body to 
which he belongs, when one gentleman accuses another 
gentleman of mental weakness or obliquity. I could 
not make up my mind to oblige him at that moment 
by showing fight. I suppose that would have pleased 
my assailant, as I don’t think he has a great deal to 
lose, and might have made a little capital out of me if 
he could have got a laugh out of the Member or either 
of the dummies, — I beg their pardon again, I mean 
the two undemonstrative boarders. But I will tell 
you, Beloved, just what I think about this matter. 

We poets, you know, are much given to indulging 
in sentiment, which is a mode of consciousness at a 
discount just now with the new generation of analysts 
who are throwing everything into their crucibles. 
Now we must not claim too much for sentiment. It 
does not go a great way in deciding questions of arith¬ 
metic, or algebra, or geometry. Two and two will 
undoubtedly make four, irrespective of the emotions 
or other idiosyncrasies of the calculator; and the three 
angles of a triangle insist on being equal to two right 
angles, in the face of the most impassioned rhetoric or 
the most inspired verse. But inasmuch as religion 
and law and the whole social order of civilized society, 
to say nothing of literature and art, are so founded on 
and pervaded by sentiment that they would all go to 
pieces without it, it is a word not to be used too lightly 
in passing judgment, as if it were an element to be 
thrown out or treated with small consideration. Rea¬ 
son may be the lever, but sentiment gives you the fid- 


136 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

crum and the place to stand on if you want to move 
the world. Even “ sentimentality, ’’ which is senti¬ 
ment overdone, is better than that affectation of supe¬ 
riority to human weakness which is only tolerable as 
one of the stage properties of full-blown dandyism, 
and is, at best, but half-blown cynicism; which par¬ 
ticiple and noun you can translate, if you happen to 
remember the derivation of the last of them, by a sin¬ 
gle familiar word. There is a great deal of false 
sentiment in the world, as there is of bad logic and 
erroneous doctrine; but it is very much less disagree¬ 
able to hear a young poet overdo his emotions, or even 
deceive himself about them, than to hear a caustic- 
epithet flinger repeating such words as “ sentimental¬ 
ity ” and “entusymusy,”— one of the least admirable 
of Lord Byron’s bequests to our language, —for the 
purpose of ridiculing him into silence. An over¬ 
dressed woman is not so pleasing as she might be, but 
at any rate she is better than the oil of vitriol squirter, 
whose profession it is to teach young ladies to avoid 
vanity by spoiling their showy silks and satins. 

The Lady was the first of our party who was in¬ 
vited to look through the equatorial. Perhaps this 
world had proved so hard to her that she was pained 
to think that other worlds existed, to be homes of suf¬ 
fering and sorrow. Perhaps she was thinking it would 
be a happy change when she should leave this’dark 
planet for one of those brighter spheres. She sighed, 
at any rate, but thanked the Young Astronomer for 
the beautiful sights he had shown her, and gave way 
to the next comer, who was That Boy, now in a state 
of irrepressible enthusiasm to see the Man in the 
Moon. He was greatly disappointed at not making 
out a colossal human figure moving round among the 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 137 


shining summits and shadowy ravines of the “spotty 
globe. ” 

The Landlady came next and wished to see the 
moon also, in preference to any other object. She 
was astonished at the revelations of the powerful tel¬ 
escope. Was there any live creatures to be seen on 
the moon? she asked. The Young Astronomer shook 
his head, smiling a little at the question. Was there 
any meet’n’-houses? There was no evidence, he said, 
that the moon was inhabited. As there did not seem 
to be either air or water on its surface, the inhabi¬ 
tants would have a rather hard time of it, and if they 
went to meeting the sermons would be apt to be rather 
dry. If there were a building on it as big as York 
minster, as big as the Boston Coliseum, the great tel¬ 
escopes like Lord Rosse’s would make it out. But it 
seemed to be a forlorn place; those who had studied 
it most agreed in considering it a “cold, crude, silent, 
and desolate ” ruin of nature, without the possibility, 
if life were on it, of articulate speech, of music, even 
of sound. Sometimes a greenish tint was seen upon 
its surface, which might have been taken for vegeta¬ 
tion, but it was thought not improbably to be a reflec¬ 
tion from the vast forests of South America. The 
ancients had a fancy, some of them, that the face of 
the moon was a mirror in which the seas and shores 
of the earth were imaged. Now we know the geogra¬ 
phy of the side toward us about as well as that of Asia, 
better than that of Africa. The Astronomer showed 
them one of the common small photographs of the 
moon. He assured them that he had received letters 
inquiring in all seriousness if these alleged lunar pho¬ 
tographs were not really taken from a peeled orange. 
People had got angry with him for laughing at them 


138 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

for asking sucli a question. Then he gave them an 
account of the famous moon-lioax which came out, he 
believed, in 1835. It was full of the most bare-faced 
absurdities, yet people swallowed it all, and even 
Arago is said to have treated it seriously as a thing 
that could not well be true, for Mr. Herschel would 
have certainly notified him of these marvellous discov¬ 
eries. The writer of it had not troubled himself to 
invent probabilities, but had borrowed his scenery 
from the Arabian Nights and his lunar inhabitants 
from Peter Wilkins. 

After this lecture the Capitalist stepped forward 
and applied his eye to the lens. I suspect it to have 
been shut most of the time, for I observe a good many 
elderly people adjust the organ of vision to any opti¬ 
cal instrument in that way. I suppose it is from the 
instinct of protection to the eye, the same instinct as 
that which makes the raw militia-man close it when he 
pulls the trigger of his musket the first time. He 
expressed himself highly gratified, however, with what 
he saw, and retired from the instrument to make room 
for the Young Girl. 

She threw her hair back and took her position at 
the instrument. Saint Simeon Stylites the Younger 
explained the wonders of the moon to her, — Tycho 
and the grooves radiating from it, Kepler and Coper¬ 
nicus with their craters and ridges, and all the most 
brilliant shows of this wonderful little world. I 
thought he was more diffuse and more enthusiastic in 
his descriptions than he had been with the older mem¬ 
bers of the party. I don’t doubt the old gentleman 
who lived so long on the top of his pillar would have 
kept a pretty sinner (if he could have had an elevator 
to hoist her up to him) longer than he would have 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 139 


kept her grandmother. These young people are so 
ignorant, you know. As for our Scheherezade, her 
delight was unbounded, and her curiosity insatiable. 
If there were any living creatures there, what odd 
things they must be. They could n’t have any lungs, 
nor any hearts. What a pity! Did they ever die? 
How could they expire if they did n’t breathe? Burn 
up ? No air to burn in. Tumble into some of those 
horrid pits, perhaps, and break all to bits. She won¬ 
dered how the young people there liked it, or whether 
there were any young people there; perhaps nobody 
was young and nobody was old, but they were like 
mummies all of them — what an idea — two mummies 
making love to each other! So she went on in a rat¬ 
tling, giddy kind of way, for she was excited by the 
strange scene in which she found herself, and quite 
astonished the Young Astronomer with her vivacity. 
All at once she turned to him. 

Will you show me the double star you said I should 
see? 

With the greatest pleasure,—he said, and pro¬ 
ceeded to wheel the ponderous dome, and then to ad¬ 
just the instrument, I think to the one in Andromeda, 
or that in Cygnus, but I should not know one of them 
from the other. 

How beautiful! — she said as she looked at the won¬ 
derful object. —One isorange red and one is emerald 
green. 

The young man made an explanation in which he 
said something about complementary colors. 

Goodness! — exclaimed the Landlady. — What! 
complimentary to our party ? 

Her wits must have been a good deal confused by 
the strange sights of the evening. She had seen tick- 


140 THE POET AT THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 

ets marked complimentary , she remembered, but she 
could not for the life of her understand why our party 
should be particularly favored at a celestial exhibition 
like this. On the whole, she questioned inwardly 
whether it might not be some subtle pleasantry, and 
smiled, experimentally, with a note of interrogation 
in the smile, but, finding no encouragement, allowed 
her features to subside gradually as if nothing had 
happened. I saw all this as plainly as if it had all 
been printed in great-primer type, instead of working 
itself out in her features. I like to see other people 
muddled now and then, because my own occasional 
dulness is relieved by a good solid background of stu¬ 
pidity in my neighbors. 

— And the two revolve round each other? — said 
the Young Girl. 

— Yes,—he answered,—two suns, a greater and 
a less, each shining, but with a different light, for the 
other. 

— How charming! It must be so much pleasanter 
than to be alone in such a great empty space ! I 
should think one would hardly care to shine if its light 
wasted itself in the monstrous solitude of the sky. 
Does not a single star seem very lonely to you up 
there ? 

— Not more lonely than I am myself, — answered 
the Young Astronomer. 

— I don’t know what there was in those few words, 
but I noticed that for a minute or two after they were 
uttered I heard the ticking of the clock-work that 
moved the telescope as clearly as if we had all been 
holding our breath, and listening for the music of the 
spheres. 

The Young Girl kept her eye closely applied to the 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 141 

eye-piece of the telescope a very long time, it seemed 
to me. Those double stars interested her a good deal, 
no doubt. When she looked off from the glass I 
thought both her eyes appeared very much as if they 
had been a little strained, for they were suffused and 
glistening. It may be that she pitied the lonely 
young man. 

I know nothing in the world tenderer than the pity 
that a kind-hearted young girl has for a young man 
who feels lonely. It is true that these dear creatures 
are all compassion for every form of human woe, and 
anxious to alleviate all human misfortunes. They will 
go to Sunday-schools through storms their brothers 
are afraid of, to teach the most unpleasant and intrac¬ 
table classes of little children the age of Methuselah 
and the dimensions of Og the King of Bashan’s bed¬ 
stead. They will stand behind a table at a fair all 
day until they are ready to drop, dressed in their pret¬ 
tiest clothes and their sweetest smiles, and lay hands 
upon you, like so many Lady Potiphars, — perfectly 
correct ones, of course, — to make you buy what you 
do not want, at prices which you cannot afford; all 
this as cheerfully as if it were not martyrdom to them 
as well as to you. Such is their love for all good ob¬ 
jects, such their eagerness to sympathize with all their 
suffering fellow-creatures! But there is nothing they 
pity as they pity a lonely young man. 

I am sure, I sympathize with her in this instance. 
To see a pale student burning away, like his own mid¬ 
night lamp, with only dead men’s hands to hold, 
stretched out to him from the sepulchres of books, and 
dead men’s souls imploring him from their tablets to 
warm them over again just for a little while in a hu¬ 
man consciousness, when all this time there are soft, 


142 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

warm, living hands that would ask nothing better 
than to bring the blood back into those cold thin fin¬ 
gers, and gently caressing natures that would wind all 
their tendrils about the unawakened heart which knows 
so little of itself, is pitiable enough and would be sad¬ 
der still if we did not have the feeling that sooner or 
later the pale student will be pretty sure to feel the 
breath of a young girl against his cheek as she looks 
over his shoulder; and that he will come all at once to 
an illuminated page in his book that never writer 
traced in characters, and never printer set up in type, 
and never binder enclosed within his covers! But our 
young man seems farther away from life than any stu¬ 
dent whose head is bent downwards over his books. 
His eyes are turned away from all human things. 
How cold the moonlight is that falls upon his fore¬ 
head, and how white he looks in it! Will not the 
rays strike through to his brain at last, and send him 
to a narrower cell than this egg-shell dome which is 
his workshop and his prison? 

I cannot say that the Young Astronomer seemed 
particularly impressed with a sense of his miserable 
condition. He said he was lonely, it is true, but he 
said it in a manly tone, and not as if he were repining 
at the inevitable condition of his devoting himself to 
that particular branch of science. Of course, he is 
lonely, the most lonely being that lives in the midst 
of our breathing world. If he would only stay a little 
longer with us when we get talking; but he is busy 
almost always either in observation or with his calcu¬ 
lations and studies, and when the nights are fair loses 
so much sleep that he must make it up by day. He 
wants contact with human beings. I wish he would 
change his seat and come round and sit by our Sche- 
herezade! 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 143 

The rest of the visit went off well enough, except 
that the “Man of Letters,” so called, rather snubbed 
some of the heavenly bodies as not quite up to his 
standard of brilliancy. I thought myself that the 
double-star episode was the best part of it. 

I have an unexpected revelation to make to the 
reader. Not long after our visit to the Observatory, 
the Young Astronomer put a package into my hands, 
a manuscript, evidently, which he said he would like 
to have me glance over. I found something in it 
which interested me, and told him the next day that 
I should like to read it with some care. He seemed 
rather pleased at this, and said that he wished I would 
criticise it as roughly as I liked, and if I saw any¬ 
thing in it which might be dressed to better advantage 
to treat it freely, just as if it were my own produc¬ 
tion. It had often happened to him, he went on to 
say, to be interrupted in his observations by clouds 
covering the objects he was examining for a longer or 
shorter time. In these idle moments he had put down 
many thoughts, unskilfully he feared, but just as they 
came into his mind. His blank verse he suspected 
was often faulty. His thoughts he knew must be 
crude, many of them. It would please him to have 
me amuse myself by putting them into shape. He 
was kind enough to say that I was an artist in words, 
but he held himself as an unskilled apprentice. 

I confess I was appalled when I cast my eye upon 
the title of the manuscript, “Cirri and Nebulae.” 

— Oh! oh! — I said, — that will never do. Peo¬ 
ple don’t know what Cirri are, at least not one out of 
fifty readers. “Wind-Clouds and Star-Drifts” will 
do better than that. 


144 THE PO^T AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


— Anything you like, — he answered, — what dif¬ 
ference does it make how you christen a foundling ? 
These are not my legitimate scientific offspring, and 
you may consider them left on your doorstep. 

— I will not attempt to say just how much of the 
diction of these lines belongs to him, and how much 
to me. He said he would never claim them, after I 
read them to him in my version. I, on my part, do 
not wish to be held responsible for some of his more 
daring thoughts, if I should see fit to reproduce them 
hereafter. At this time I shall give only the first part 
of the series of poetical outbreaks for which the young 
devotee of science must claim his share of the respon¬ 
sibility. I may put some more passages into shape 
by and by. 

WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS. 

Another clouded night ; the stars are hid, 

The orb that waits my search is hid with them. 

Patience ! Why grudge an hour, a month, a year, 

To plant my ladder and to gain the round 
That leads my footsteps to the heaven of fame, 

Where waits the wreath my sleepless midnights won ? 

Not the stained laurel such as heroes wear 
That withers when some stronger conqueror’s heel 
Treads down their shrivelling trophies in the dust; 

But the fair garland whose undying green 
Not time can change, nor wrath of gods or men ! 

With quickened heart-beats I shall hear the tongue* 

That speak my praise ; but better far the sense 
That in the unshaped ages, buried deep 
In the dark mines of unaccomplished time 
Yet to be stamped with morning’s royal die 
And coined in golden days, — in those dim years 
I shall be reckoned with the undying dead, 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


My name emblazoned on the fiery arch, 

Unfading till the stars themselves shall fade. 

Then, as they call the roll of shining worlds, 

Sages of race unborn in accents new 

Shall count me with the Olympian ones of old, 

Whose glories kindle through the midnight sky : 

Here glows the God of Battles ; this recalls 
The Lord of Ocean, and yon far-off sphere 
The Sire of Him who gave his ancient name 
To the dim planet with the wondrous rings ; 

Here flames the Queen of Beauty’s silver lamp, 

And there the moon-girt orb of mighty Jove ; 

But this, unseen through all earth’s aeons past, 

A youth who watched beneath the western star 
Sought in the darkness, found, and showed to men ; 
Linked with his name thenceforth and evermore ! 

So shall that name be syllabled anew 
In all the tongues of all the tribes of men : 

I that have been through immemorial years 

Dust in the dust of my forgotten time 

Shall live in accents shaped of blood-warm breath. 

Yea, rise in mortal semblance, newly born 
In shining stone, in undecaying bronze, 

And stand on high, and look serenely down 
On the new race that calls the earth its own. 

Is this a cloud, that, blown athwart my soul, 

Wears a false seeming of the pearly stain 
Where worlds beyond the world their mingling rays 
Blend in soft white, — a cloud that, born of earth, 
Would cheat the soul that looks for light from heaven ? 
Must every coral-insect leave his sign 
On each poor grain he lent to build the reef, 

As Babel’s builders stamped their sunburnt clay, 

Or deem his patient service all in vain ? 

What if another sit beneath the shade 
Of the broad elm I planted by the way, — 

What if another heed the beacon light 
I set upon the rock that wrecked my keel, — 

Have I not done my task and served my kind ? 

Nay, rather act thy part, unnamed, unknown, 


146 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


And let Fame blow her trumpet through the world 
With noisy wind to swell a fool’s renown, 

Joined with some truth he stumbled blindly o’er, ^ 
Or coupled with some single shining deed 
That in the great account of all his days 
Will stand alone upon the bankrupt sheet 
His pitying angel shows the clerk of Heaven. 

The noblest service comes from nameless hands, 

And the best servant does his work unseen. 

Who found the seeds of fire and made them shoot, 

Fed by his breath, in buds and flowers of flame ? 

Who forged in roaring flames the ponderous stone, 
And shaped the moulded metal to his need ? 

Who gave the dragging car its rolling wheel, 

And tamed the steed that whirls its circling round ? 
All these have left their work and not their names, — 
Why should I murmur at a fate like theirs ? 

This is the heavenly light ; the pearly stain 
Was but a wind-cloud drifting o’er the stars ! 


VI. 

I find I have so many things in common with the 
old Master of Arts, that I do not always know 
whether a thought was originally his or mine. That 
is what always happens where two persons of a similar 
cast of mind talk much together. And both of them 
often gain by the interchange. Many ideas grow bet¬ 
ter when transplanted into another mind than in the 
one where they sprang up. That which was a weed 
in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other. A 
flower, on the other hand, may dwindle down to a 
mere weed by the same change. Healthy growths 
may become poisonous by falling upon the wrong 
mental soil, and what seemed a night-shade in one 
mind unfold as a morning-glory in the other. 

— I thank God, — the Master said, — that a great 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 147 

many people believe a great deal more than I do. I 
think, when it comes to serious matters, I like those 
who believe more than I do better than those who be¬ 
lieve less. 

— Why, — said I, — you have got hold of one of 
my own working axioms. I should like to hear you 
develop it. 

The Member of the Haouse said he should be glad 
to listen to the debate. The gentleman had the floor. 
The Scarabee rose from his chair and departed; — I 
thought his joints creaked as he straightened himself. 

The Young Girl made a slight movement; it was 
a purely accidental coincidence, no doubt, but I saw 
That Boy put his hand in his pocket and pull out his 
popgun, and begin loading it. It cannot be that our 
Scheherezade, who looks so quiet and proper at the 
table, can make use of That Boy and his catapult to 
control the course cf conversation and change it to 
suit herself! She certainly looks innocent enough; 
but what does a blush prove, and what does its absence 
prove, on one of these innocent faces? There is no¬ 
thing in all this world that can lie and cheat like the 
face and the tongue of a young girl. Just give her a 
little touch of hysteria, — I don’t mean enough of it 
to make her friends call the doctor in, but a slight 
hint of it in the nervous system, — and “ Machiavel 
the waiting-maid” might take lessons of her. But 
I cannot think our Scheherezade is one of that kind, 
and I am ashamed of myself for noting such a trifling 
coincidence as that which excited my suspicion. 

— I say, — the Master continued, — that I had 
rather be in the company of those who believe more 
than I do, in spiritual matters at least, than of those 
who doubt what I accept as a part of my belief. 


148 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— To tell the truth, — said I, — I find that diffi¬ 
culty sometimes in talking with you. You have not 
quite so many hesitations as I have in following out 
your logical conclusions. I suppose you would bring 
some things out into daylight questioning that I had 
rather leave in that twilight of half-belief peopled with 
shadows — if they are only shadows — more sacred to 
me than many realities. 

There is nothing I do not question, — said the 
Master; — I not only begin with the precept of Des¬ 
cartes, but I hold all my opinions involving any chain 
of reasoning always open to revision. 

— I confess that I smiled internally to hear him 
say that. The old Master thinks he is open to con¬ 
viction on all subjects; but if you meddle with some 
of his notions and don’t get tossed on his horns as if 
a bull had hold of you, I should call you lucky. 

— You don’t mean you doubt everything? — I said. 

— What do you think I question everything for, — 
the Master replied,—if I never get any answers? 
You ’ve seen a blind man with a stick, feeling his 
way along? Well, I am a blind man with a stick, 
and I find the world pretty full of men just as blind 
as I am, but without any stick. I try the ground to 
find out whether it is firm or not before I rest my 
weight on it; but after it has borne my weight, that 
question at least is answered. It very certainly was 
strong enough once; the presumption is that it is 
strong enough now. Still the soil may have been un¬ 
dermined, or I may have grown heavier. Make as 
much of that as you will. I say I question every¬ 
thing; but if I find Bunker Hill Monument standing 
as straight as when I leaned against it a year or ten 
years ago, I am not very much afraid that Bunker 


TIIE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 149 

Hill will cave in if I trust myself again on the soil 
of it. 

I glanced off, as one often does in talk. 

The Monument is an awful place to visit, — I said. 
-— The waves of time are like the waves of the ocean; 
the only thing they heat against without destroying 
it is a rock; and they destroy that at last. But it 
takes a good while. There is a stone now standing in 
very good order that was as old as a monument of 
Louis XIV. and Queen Anne’s day is now when Jo* 
seph went down into Egypt. Think of the shaft on 
Bunker Hill standing in the sunshine on the morning 
of January 1st in the year 5872! 

It won’t be standing, — the Master said. — We are 
poor bunglers compared to those old Egyptians. 
There are no joints in one of their obelisks. They 
are our masters in more ways than we know of, and 
in more ways than some of us are willing to know. 
That old Lawgiver was n’t learned in all the wisdom 
of the Egyptians for nothing. It scared people well a 
couple of hundred years ago when Sir John Marsham 
and Dr. John Spencer ventured to tell their stories 
about the sacred ceremonies of the Egyptian priest¬ 
hood. People are beginning to find out now that 
you can’t study any religion by itself to any good pur¬ 
pose. You must have comparative theology as you 
have comparative anatomy. What would you make 
of a cat’s foolish little good-for-nothing collar-bone, 
if you did not know how the same bone means a good 
deal in other creatures, — in yourself, for instance, 
as you ’ll find out if you break it? You can’t know 
too much of your race and its beliefs, if you want to 
know anything about your Maker. I never found but 
one sect large enough to hold the whole of me. 


150 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— And may I ask what that was? — I said. 

— The Human sect, — the Master answered. — 
That has about room enough for me, — at present, I 
mean to say. 

— Including cannibals and all? — said I. 

— Oh, as to that, the eating of one’s kind is a mat¬ 
ter of taste, but the roasting of them has been rather 
more a specialty of our own particular belief than of 
any other I am acquainted with. If you broil a saint, 
I don’t see why, if you have a mind, you should n’t 
serve him up at your — 

Pop! went the little piece of artillery. Don’t tell 
me it was accident. I know better. You can’t sup¬ 
pose for one minute that a boy like that one would 
time his interruptions so cleverly. Now it so hap¬ 
pened that at that particular moment Dr. B. Frank¬ 
lin was not at the table. You may draw your own 
conclusions. I say nothing, but I think a good deal. 

— I came back to the Bunker Hill Monument. — I 
often think — I said — of the dynasty which is to 
reign in its shadow for some thousands of years, it 
may be. 

The “Man of Letters,” so called, asked me, in a 
tone I did not exactly like, whether I expected to live 
long enough to see a monarchy take the place of a re¬ 
public in this country. 

— No, — said I, — I was thinking of something 
very different. I was indulging a fancy of mine 
about the Man who is to sit at the foot of the monu¬ 
ment for one, or it may be two or three thousand 
years. As long as the monument stands and there is 
a city near it, there will always be a man to take the 
names of visitors and extract some small tribute from 
their pockets, I suppose. I sometimes get thinking 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 151 

of the long, unbroken succession of these men, until 
they come to look like one Man; continuous in being, 
unchanging as the stone he watches, looking upon the 
successive generations of human beings as they come 
and go, and outliviug all the dynasties of the world in 
all probability. It has come to such a pass that I 
never speak to the Man of the Monument without 
wanting to take my hat off and feeling as if I were 
looking down a vista of twenty or thirty centuries. 

The “Man of Letters,” so called, said, in a rather 
contemptuous way, I thought, that he had n’t got so 
far as that. He was n’t quite up to moral reflections 
on toll-men and ticket-takers. Sentiment was n’t his 
tap. 

He looked round triumphantly for a response: but 
the Capitalist was a little hard of hearing just then; 
the Register of Deeds was browsing on his food in the 
calm bovine abstraction of a quadruped, and paid no 
attention; the Salesman had bolted his breakfast, and 
whisked himself away with that peculiar alacrity which 
belongs to the retail dealer’s assistant; and the Mem¬ 
ber of the Haouse, who had sometimes seemed to be 
impressed with his “tahlented mahn’s” air of superi¬ 
ority to the rest of us, looked as if he thought the 
speaker was not exactly parliamentary. So he failed 
to make his point, and reddened a little, and was not 
in the best humor, I thought, when he left the table. 
I hope he will not let off any of his irritation on our 
poor little Scheherezade; but the truth is, the first 
person a man of this sort (if he is what I think him) 
meets, when he is out of humor, has to be made a 
victim of, and I only hope our Young Girl will not 
have to play Jephthah’s daughter. 

And that leads me to say, I cannot help thinking 


152 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

that the kind of criticism to which this Young Girl 
has been subjected from some person or other, who is 
willing to be smart at her expense, is hurtfid and 
not wholesome. The question is a delicate one. So 
many foolish persons are rushing into print, that it 
requires a kind of literary police to hold them back 
and keep them in order. Where there are mice there 
must be cats, and where there are rats we may think 
it worth our while to keep a terrier, who will give 
them a shake and let them drop, with all the mischief 
taken out of them. But the process is a rude and 
cruel one at best, and it too often breeds a love of 
destructiveness for its own sake in those who get their 
living by it. A poor poem or essay does not do 
much harm after all; nobody reads it who is like to 
be seriously hurt by it. But a sharp criticism with 
a drop of witty venom in it stings a young author 
almost to death, and makes an old one uncomfortable 
to no purpose. If it were my business to sit in judg¬ 
ment on my neighbors, I would try to be courteous, 
at least, to those who had done any good service, 
but, above all, I would handle tenderly those young 
authors who are coming before the public in the flut¬ 
ter of their first or early appearance, and are in the 
trembling delirium of stage-fright already. Before 
you write that brilliant notice of some alliterative 
Angelina’s book of verses, I wish you would try this 
experiment. 

Take half a sheet of paper and copy upon it any of 
Angelina’s stanzas, — the ones you were going to 
make fun of, if you will. Now go to your window, 
if it is a still day, open it, and let the half-sheet of 
paper drop on the outside. How gently it falls 
through the soft air, always tending downwards, but 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 153 

sliding softly, from side to side, wavering, hesitating, 
balancing, until it settles as noiselessly as a snow-flake 
upon the all-receiving bosom of the earth! Just such 
would have been the fate of poor Angelina’s fluttering 
effort, if you had left it to itself. It would have 
slanted downward into oblivion so sweetly and softly 
that she would have never known when it reached 
that harmless consummation. 

Our epizoic literature is becoming so extensive that 
nobody is safe from its ad infinitum progeny. A 
man writes a book of criticisms. A Quarterly Review 
criticises the critic. A Monthly Magazine takes up 
the critic’s critic. A Weekly Journal criticises the 
critic of the critic’s critic, and a daily paper favors us 
with some critical remarks on the performance of the 
writer in the Weekly, who has criticised the critical 
notice in the Monthly of the critical essay in the 
Quarterly on the critical work we started with. And 
thus we see that as each flea “has smaller fleas that on 
him prey,” even the critic himself cannot escape the 
common lot of being bitten. Whether all this is a 
blessing or a curse, like that one which made Pharaoh 
and all his household run to their toilet-tables, is a 
question about which opinions might differ. The 
physiologists of the time of Moses — if there were 
vivisectors other than priests in those days — would 
probably have considered that other plague, of the 
frogs, as a fortunate opportunity for science, as this 
poor little beast has been the soufi're-douleur of ex¬ 
perimenters and schoolboys from time immemorial. 

But there is a form of criticism to which none will 
object. It is impossible to come before a public so 
alive with sensibilities as this we live in, with the 
smallest evidence of a sympathetic disposition, with- 


154 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

out making friends in a very unexpected way. Every¬ 
where there are minds tossing on the unquiet waves 
of doubt. If you confess to the same perplexities and 
uncertainties that torture them, they are grateful for 
your companionship. If you have groped your way 
out of the wilderness in which you were once wander¬ 
ing with them, they will follow your footsteps, it may 
be, and bless you as their deliverer. So, all at once, 
a writer finds he has a parish of devout listeners, 
scattered, it is true, beyond the reach of any summons 
but that of a trumpet like the archangel’s, to whom 
his slight discourse may be of more value than the 
exhortations they hear from the pulpit, if these last do 
not happen to suit their special needs. Young men 
with more ambition and intelligence than force of 
character, who have missed their first steps in life and 
are stumbling irresolute amidst vague aims and chang¬ 
ing purposes, hold out their hands, imploring to be 
led into, or at least pointed towards, some path where 
they can find a firm foothold. Young women born 
into a chilling atmosphere of circumstance which 
keeps all the buds of their nature unopened and al¬ 
ways striving to get to a ray of sunshine, if one 
finds its way to their neighborhood, tell their stories, 
sometimes simply and touchingly, sometimes in a more 
or less affected and rhetorical way, but still stories of 
defeated and disappointed instincts which ought to 
make any moderately impressible person feel very 
tenderly toward them. 

In speaking privately to these young persons, many 
of whom have literary aspirations, one should be very 
considerate of their human feelings. But addressing 
them collectively a few plain truths will not give any 
one of them much pain. Indeed, almost every indi- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 155 


vidual among them will feel sure that he or she is an 
exception to those generalities which apply so well to 
the rest. 

If I were a literary Pope sending out an Encyclical, 
I would tell these inexperienced persons that nothing 
is so frequent as to mistake an ordinary human gift 
for a special and extraordinary endowment. The 
mechanism of breathing and that of swallowing are 
very wonderful, and if one had seen and studied them 
in his own person only, he might well think himself a 
prodigy. Everybody knows these and other bodily 
faculties are common gifts; but nobody except edi¬ 
tors and school-teachers and here and there a literary 
man knows how common is the capacity of rhyming 
and prattling in readable prose, especially among 
young women of a certain degree of education. In 
my character of Pontiff, I should tell these young 
persons that most of them labored under a delusion. 
It is very hard to believe it; one feels so full of intel¬ 
ligence and so decidedly superior to one’s dull rela¬ 
tions and schoolmates; one writes so easily and the 
lines sound so prettily to one’s self; there are such 
felicities of expression, just like those we hear quoted 
from the great poets; and besides one has been told 
by so many friends that all one had to do was to print 
and be famous! Delusion, my poor dear, delusion at 
least nineteen times out of twenty, yes, ninety-nine 
times in a hundred. 

But as private father confessor, I always allow as 
much as I can for the one chance in the hundred. I 
try not to take away all hope, unless the case is 
clearly desperate, and then to direct the activities into 
some other channel. 

Using kind language, I can talk pretty freely. I 


156 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


have counselled more than one aspirant after literary 
fame to go back to his tailor’s board or his lapstone. 
I have advised the dilettanti , whose foolish friends 
praised their verses or their stories, to give up all 
their deceptive dreams of making a name by their 
genius, and go to work in the study of a profession 
which asked only for the diligent use of average, 
ordinary talents. It is a very grave responsibility 
which these unknown correspondents throw upon their 
chosen counsellors. One whom you have never seen, 
who lives in a community of which you know nothing, 
sends you specimens more or less painfully voluminous 
of his writings, which he asks you to read over, think 
over, and pray over, and send back an answer inform¬ 
ing him whether fame and fortune are awaiting him 
as the possessor of the wonderful gifts his writings 
manifest, and whether you advise him to leave all, 
— the shop he sweeps out every morning, the ledger 
he posts, the mortar in which he pounds, the bench 
at which he urges the reluctant plane, — and follow 
his genius whithersoever it may lead him. The next 
correspondent wants you to mark out a whole course 
of life for him, and the means of judgment he gives 
you are about as adequate as the brick which the sim¬ 
pleton of old carried round as an advertisement of the 
house he had to sell. My advice to all the young men 
that write to me depends somewhat on the handwrit¬ 
ing and spelling. If these are of a certain charac¬ 
ter, and they have reached a mature age, I recom¬ 
mend some honest manual calling, such as they have 
very probably been bred to, and which will, at least, 
give them a chance of becoming President of the 
United States by and by, if that is any object to 
them. What would you have done with the young 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 157 


person who called on me a good many years ago, — 
so many that he has probably forgotten his literary 
effort, — and read as specimens of his literary work¬ 
manship lines like those which I will favor you with 
presently? He was an able-bodied, grown-up young 
person, whose ingenuousness interested me; and I am 
sure if I thought he would ever be pained to see his 
maiden effort in print, I would deny myself the plea¬ 
sure of submitting it to the reader. The following 
is an exact transcript of the lines he showed me, and 
which I took down on the spot: — 

“ Are you in the vein for cider ? 

Are you in the tune for pork ? 

Hist! for Betty’s cleared the larder 

And turned the pork to soap.” 

Do not judge too hastily this sincere effort of a maiden 
muse. Here was a sense of rhythm, and an effort in 
the direction of rhyme; here was an honest transcript 
of an occurrence of daily life, told with a certain ideal¬ 
izing expression, recognizing the existence of impulses, 
mysterious instincts, impelling us even in the selec¬ 
tion of our bodily sustenance. But-1 had to tell him 
that it wanted dignity of incident and grace of nar¬ 
rative, that there was no atmosphere to it, nothing of 
the light that never was and so forth. I did not say 
this in these very words, but I gave him to under¬ 
stand, without being too hard upon him, that he had 
better not desert his honest toil in pursuit of the 
poet’s bays. This, it must be confessed, was a rather 
discouraging case. A young person like this may 
pierce, as the Frenchmen say, by and by, but the 
chances are all the other way. 

I advise aimless young men to choose some profes- 


158 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

sion without needless delay, and so get into a good 
strong current of human affairs, and find themselves 
bound up in interests with a compact body of their 
fellow-men. 

I advise young women who write to me for counsel, 
— perhaps I do not advise them at all, only sympa¬ 
thize a little with them, and listen to what they have 
to say (eight closely written pages on the average, 
which I always read from beginning to end, thinking 
of the widow’s cruse and myself in the character of 
Elijah) and — and — come now, I don’t believe Me¬ 
thuselah would tell you what he said in his letters to 
young ladies, written when he was in his nine hun¬ 
dred and sixty-ninth year. 

But, dear me! how much work all this private crit¬ 
icism involves ! An editor has only to say “respect¬ 
fully declined,” and there is the end of it. But the 
confidential adviser is expected to give the reasons of 
his likes and dislikes in detail, and sometimes to enter 
into an argument for their support. That is more 
than any martyr can stand, but what trials he must 
go through, as it is! Great bundles of manuscripts, 
verse or prose, which the recipient is expected to read, 
perhaps to recommend to a publisher, at any rate to 
express a well-digested and agreeably flavored opinion 
about; which opinion, nine times out of ten, disguise 
it as we may, has to be a bitter draught; every form 
of egotism, conceit, false sentiment, hunger for noto¬ 
riety, and eagerness for display of anserine plumage 
before the admiring public; — all these come in by 
mail or express, covered with postage-stamps of so 
much more cost than the value of the waste words 
they overlie, that one comes at last to groan and 
change color at the very sight of a package, and to 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 159 

dread the postman’s knock as if it were that of the 
other visitor whose naked knuckles rap at every door. 

Still there are experiences which go far towards re¬ 
paying all these inflictions. My last young man’s case 
looked desperate enough; some of his sails had blown 
from the rigging, some were backing in the wind, and 
some were flapping and shivering, but I told him 
which way to head, and to my surprise he promised 
to do just as I directed, and I do not doubt is under 
full sail at this moment. 

What if I should tell my last, my very recent ex¬ 
perience with the other sex? I received a paper con¬ 
taining the inner history of a young woman’s life, the 
evolution of her consciousness from its earliest record 
of itself, written so thoughtfully, so sincerely, with so 
much firmness and yet so much delicacy, with such 
truth of detail and such grace in the manner of tell¬ 
ing, that I finished the long manuscript almost at a 
sitting, with a pleasure rarely, almost never experi¬ 
enced in voluminous communications which one has to 
spell out of handwriting. This was from a correspon¬ 
dent who made my acquaintance by letter when she 
was little more than a child, some years ago. How 
easy at that early period to have silenced her by in¬ 
difference, to have wounded her by a careless epithet, 
perhaps even to have crushed her as one puts his heel 
on a weed ! A very little encouragement kept her 
from despondency, and brought back one of those 
overflows of gratitude which make one more ashamed 
of himself for being so overpaid than he would be for 
having committed any of the lesser sins. But what 
pleased me most in the paper lately received was to see 
how far the writer had outgrown the need of any 
encouragement of mine; that she had strengthened out 


160 THE POET AT THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 

of her tremulous questionings into a self-reliance and 
self-poise which I had hardly dared to anticipate for 
her. Some of my readers who are also writers have 
very probably had more numerous experiences of this 
kind than I can lay claim to; self-revelations from 
unknown and sometimes nameless friends, who write 
from strange corners where the winds have wafted 
some stray words of theirs which have lighted in the 
minds and reached the hearts of those to whom they 
were as the angel that stirred the pool of Bethesda. 
Perhaps this is the best reward authorship brings; it 
may not imply much talent or literary excellence, but 
it means that your way of thinking and feeling is just 
what some one of your fellow-creatures needed. 

— I have been putting into shape, according to his 
request, some further passages from the Young As¬ 
tronomer’s manuscript, some of which the reader will 
have a chance to read if he is so disjjosed. The con¬ 
flict in the young man’s mind between the desire for 
fame and the sense of its emptiness as compared with 
nobler aims has set me thinking about the subject 
from a somewhat humbler point of view. As I am 
in the habit of telling you, Beloved, many of my 
thoughts, as well as of repeating what was said at our 
table, you may read what follows as if it were ad¬ 
dressed to you in the course of an ordinary conversa¬ 
tion, where I claimed rather more than my share, as I 
am afraid I am a little in the habit of doing. 

I suppose we all, those of us who write in verse or 
prose, have the habitual feeling that we should like 
to be remembered. It is to be awake when all of 
those who were round us have been long wrapped in 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 161 

slumber. It is a pleasant thought enough that the 
name by which we have been called shall be familiar 
on the lips of those who come after us, and the 
thoughts that wrought themselves out in our intelli¬ 
gence, the emotions that trembled through our frames, 
shall live themselves over again in the minds and 
hearts of others. 

But is there not something of rest, of calm, in the 
thought of gently and gradually fading away out of 
human remembrance? What line have we written 
that was on a level with our conceptions? What page 
of ours that does not betray some weakness we would 
fain have left unrecorded ? To become a classic and 
share the life of a language is to be ever open to crit¬ 
icisms, to comparisons, to the caprices of successive 
generations, to be called into court and stand a trial 
before a new jury, once or more than once in every 
century. To be forgotten is to sleep in peace with 
the undisturbed myriads, no longer subject to the 
chills and heats, the blasts, the sleet, the dust, which 
assail in endless succession that shadow of a man 
which we call his reputation. The line which dying 
we could wish to blot has been blotted out for us by a 
hand so tender, so patient, so used to its kindly task, 
that the page looks as fair as if it had never borne the 
record of our infirmity or our transgression. And 
then so few would be wholly content with their legacy 
of fame. You remember poor Monsieur Jacques’s 
complaint of the favoritism shown to Monsieur Ber- 
thier,—it is in that exquisite “Week in a French 
Country-House.” “Have you seen his room? Have 
you seen how large it is? Twice as large as mine! 
He has two jugs, a large one and a little one. I have 
only one small one. And a tea-service and a gilt 


162 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


Cupid on the top of his looking-glass.” The famous 
survivor of himself has had his features preserved in 
a medallion, and the slice of his countenance seems 
clouded with the thought that it does not belong to a 
bust; the bust ought to look happy in its niche, but 
the statue opposite makes it feel as if it had been 
cheated out of half its personality, and the statue looks 
uneasy because another stands on a loftier pedestal. 
But “Ignotus ” and “Miserrimus” are of the great 
majority in that vast assembly, that House of Com¬ 
mons whose members are all peers, where to be for¬ 
gotten is the standing rule. The dignity of a silent 
memory is not to be undervalued. Fame is after all 
a kind of rude handling, and a name that is often on 
vulgar lips seems to borrow something not to be de¬ 
sired, as the paper money that passes from hand to 
hand gains somewhat which is a loss thereby. O 
sweet, tranquil refuge of oblivion, so far as earth is 
concerned, for us poor blundering, stammering, mis¬ 
behaving creatures wdio cannot turn over a leaf of our 
life’s diary without feeling thankful that its failure 
can no longer stare us in the face! Not unwelcome 
shall be the baptism of dust which hides forever the 
name that was given in the baptism of water! We 
shall have good company whose names are left un¬ 
spoken by posterity. “Who knows whether the best 
of men be known, or whether there be not more re¬ 
markable persons forgot than any that stand remem¬ 
bered in the known account of time? The greater 
part must be content to be as though they had not 
been; to be found in the register of God, not in the 
record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the 
first story before the flood, and the recorded names 
ever since contain not one living century.” 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 163 

I have my moods about such things as the Young 
Astronomer has, as we all have. There are times 
when the thought of becoming utterly nothing to the 
world we knew so well and loved so much is painful 
and oppressive; we gasp as if in a vacuum, missing 
the atmosphere of life we have so long been in the habit 
of breathing. Not the less are there moments when 
the aching need of repose comes over us and the re* 
quiescat in pace , heathen benediction as it is, sounds 
more sweetly in our ears than all the promises that 
Tame can hold out to us. 

I wonder whether it ever occurred to you to reflect 
upon another horror there must be in leaving a name 
behind you. Think what a horrid piece of work the 
biographers make of a man’s private history! Just 
imagine the subject of one of those extraordinary fic¬ 
tions called biographies coming back and reading the 
life of himself, written very probably by somebody or 
other who thought he could turn a penny by doing it, 
and having the pleasure of seeing 

“ His little bark attendant sail, 

Pursue the triumph and partake the gale.” 

The ghost of the person condemned to walk the earth 
in a biography glides into a public library, and goes 
to the shelf where his mummied life lies in its pa¬ 
per cerements. I can see the pale shadow glancing 
through the pages and hear the comments that shape 
themselves in the bodiless intelligence as if they were 
made vocal by living lips. 

“Born in July , 1776!” And my honored father 
killed at the battle of Bunker Hill! Atrocious libel¬ 
ler! to slander one’s family at the start after such a 
fashion! 


164 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

“The death of his parents left him in charge of his 
Aunt Nancy, whose tender care took the place of those 
parental attentions which should have guided and pro¬ 
tected his infant years, and consoled him for the sever¬ 
ity of another relative.” 

— Aunt Nancy ! It was Aunt Betsey, you fool! 
Aunt Nancy used to — she has been dead these eighty 
years, so there is no use in mincing matters — she 
used to keep a bottle and a stick, and when she had 
been tasting a drop out of the bottle the stick used to 
come off the shelf and I had to taste that. And here 
she is made a saint of, and poor Aunt Betsey, that 
did everything for me, is slandered by implication as 
a horrid tyrant! 

“The subject of this commemorative history was 
remarkable for a precocious development of intelli¬ 
gence. An old nurse who saw him at the very earli¬ 
est period of his existence is said to have spoken of 
him as one of the most promising infants she had seen 
in her long experience. At school he was equally 
remarkable, and at a tender age he received a paper 
adorned with a cut, inscribed Reward of Merit.” 

— I don’t doubt the nurse said that, — there were 
several promising children born about that time. As 
for cuts , I got more from the schoolmaster’s rattan 
than in any other shape. Did n’t one of my teach¬ 
ers split a Gunter’s scale into three pieces over the 
palm of my hand? And didn’t I grin when I saw 
the pieces fly ? No humbug, now, about my boyhood! 

“ His personal appearance was not singularly pre¬ 
possessing. Inconspicuous in stature and unattrac¬ 
tive in features ” — 

— You misbegotten son of an ourang and grandson 
of an ascidian (ghosts keep up with science, you ob- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 165 

serve), what business have you to be holding up my 
person to the contempt of my posterity? Haven’t I 
been sleeping for this many a year in quiet, and don’t 
the dandelions and buttercups look as yellow over me 
as over the best-looking neighbor I have in the dor¬ 
mitory ? Why do you want to people the minds of 
everybody that reads your good-for-nothing libel which 
you call a “biography” with your impudent carica¬ 
tures of a man who was a better-looking fellow than 
yourself, I ’ll bet you ten to one, a man whom his 
Latin tutor called formosus puer when he was only a 
freshman? If that’s what it means to make a repu¬ 
tation, — to leave your character and your person, and 
the good name of your sainted relatives, and all you 
were, and all you had and thought and felt, so far as 
can be gathered by digging you out of your most pri¬ 
vate records, to be manipulated and bandied about 
and cheapened in the literary market as a chicken or 
a turkey or a goose is handled and bargained over at 
a provision stall, is n’t it better to be content with the 
honest blue slate-stone and its inscription informing 
posterity that you were a worthy citizen and a re¬ 
spected father of a family ? 

— I should like to see any man’s biography with 
corrections and emendations by his ghost. We don’t 
know each other’s secrets quite so well as we flatter 
ourselves we do. We don’t always know our own se¬ 
crets as well as we might. You have seen a tree with 
different grafts upon it, an apple or a pear tree we 
will say. In the late summer months the fruit on one 
bough will ripen; I remember just such a tree, and 
the early ripening fruit was the Jargonelle. By and 
by the fruit of another bough will begin to come into 
condition; the lovely Saint Michael, as I remember, 


166 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

grew on the same stock as the Jargonelle in the tree 
I am thinking of; and then, when these have all fallen 
or been gathered, another, we will say the Winter 
Nelis, has its turn, and so out of the same juices have 
come in succession fruits of the most varied aspects 
and flavors. It is the same thing with ourselves, but 
it takes us a long while to find it out. The various 
inherited instincts ripen in succession. You may be 
nine tenths paternal at one period of your life, and 
nine tenths maternal at another. All at once the 
traits of some immediate ancestor may come to matu¬ 
rity unexpectedly on one of the branches of your char¬ 
acter, just as your features at different periods of your 
life betray different resemblances to your nearer or 
more remote relatives. 

But I want you to let me go back to the Bunker 
Hill Monument and the dynasty of twenty or thirty 
centuries whose successive representatives are to sit 
in the gate, like the Jewish monarchs, while the peo¬ 
ple shall come by hundreds and by thousands to visit 
the memorial shaft until the story of Bunker’s Hill is 
as old as that of Marathon. 

Would not one like to attend twenty consecutive 
soirees, at each one of which the lion of the party 
should be the Man of the Monument, at the beginning 
of each century, all the way, we will say, from Anno 
Domini 2000 to Ann. Dom. 4000, —or, if you think 
the style of dating will be changed, say to Ann. Dar- 
winii (we can keep A. D. you see) 1872? Will the 
Man be of the Indian type, as President Samuel Stan¬ 
hope Smith and others have supposed the transplanted 
European will become by and by? Will he have 
shortened down to four feet and a little more, like the 
Esquimaux, or will he have been bred up to seven feet 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 167 

by the use of new chemical diets, ozonized and other¬ 
wise improved atmospheres, and animal fertilizers? 
Let us summon him in imagination and ask him a few 
questions. 

Is n’t it like splitting a toad out of a rock to think 
of this man of nineteen or twenty centuries hence 
coming out from his stony dwelling-place and speaking 
with us? What are the questions we should ask him? 
He has but a few minutes to stay. Make out your 
own list; I will set down a few that come up to me as 
I write. 

— What is the prevalent religious creed of civiliza¬ 
tion? 

— Has the planet met with any accident of impor¬ 
tance? 

— How general is the republican form of govern¬ 
ment? 

— Do men fly yet? 

— Has the universal language come into use ? 

— Is there a new fuel since the English coal-mines 
have given out? 

— Is the euthanasia a recognized branch of medical 
science? 

— Is the oldest inhabitant still living ? 

— Is the Daily Advertiser still published? 

— And the Evening Transcript ? 

-— Is there much inquiry for the works of a writer 
of the nineteenth century (Old Style) by — the — 
name-of — of — 

My tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth. I 
cannot imagine the putting of that question without 
feeling the tremors which shake a wooer as he falters 
out the words the answer to which will make him 
happy or wretched. 


168 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Whose works was I going to question him about, do 
you ask me? 

Oh, the writings of a friend of mine, much esteemed 
by his relatives and others. But it’s of no conse¬ 
quence, after all; I think he says he does not care 
much for posthumous reputation. 

I find something of the same interest in thinking 
about one of the boarders at our table that I find in 
my waking dreams concerning the Man of the Monu¬ 
ment. This personage is the Register of Deeds. He 
is an unemotional character, living in his business 
almost as exclusively as the Scarabee, but without any 
of that eagerness and enthusiasm which belong to 
our scientific specialist. His work is largely, prin¬ 
cipally, I may say, mechanical. He has developed, 
however, a certain amount of taste for the antiquities of 
his department, and once in a while brings out some 
curious result of his investigations into ancient docu¬ 
ments. He too belongs to a dynasty which will last 
as long as there is such a thing as property in land 
and dwellings. When that is done away with, and we 
return to the state of villanage, holding our tenement- 
houses, all to be of the same pattern, of the State, — 
that is to say, of the Tammany Ring which is to take 
the place of the feudal lord, — the office of Register 
of Deeds will, I presume, become useless, and the 
dynasty will be deposed. 

As we grow older we think more and more of old 
persons and of old things and places. As to old per¬ 
sons, it seems as if we never know how much they 
have to tell until we are old ourselves and they have 
been gone twenty or thirty years. Once in a while we 
come upon some survivor of his or her generation that 
we have overlooked, and feel as if we had recovered 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 169 


one of tlie lost books of Livy or fished up the golden 
candlestick from the ooze of the Tiber. So it was the 
other day after my reminiscences of the old gambrel- 
roofed house and its visitors. They found an echo in 
the recollections of one of the brightest and liveliest of 
my suburban friends, whose memory is exact about 
everything except her own age, which, there can be 
no doubt, she makes out a score or two of years more 
than it really is. Still sli£ was old enough to touch 
some lights — and a shadow or two — into the portraits 
I had drawn, which made me wish that she and not 
I had been the artist who sketched the pictures. 
Among the lesser regrets that mingle with graver sor¬ 
rows for the friends of an earlier generation we have 
lost, are our omissions to ask them so many questions 
they could have answered easily enough, and would 
have been pleased to be asked. There! I say to my¬ 
self sometimes, in an absent mood, I must ask her 
about that. But she of whom I am now thinking has 
long been beyond the reach of any earthly question¬ 
ing, and I sigh to think how easily I could have 
learned some fact which I should have been happy to 
have transmitted with pious care to those who are to 
come after me. How many times I have heard her 
quote the line about blessings brightening as they take 
their flight, and how # true it proves in many little ways 
that one never thinks of until it is too late ! 

The Register of Deeds is not himself advanced in 
years. But he borrows an air of antiquity from the 
ancient records which are stored in his sepulchral 
archives. I love to go to his ossuary of dead transac¬ 
tions, as I would visit the catacombs of Rome or 
Paris. It is like wandering up the Nile to stray 
among the shelves of his monumental folios. Here 


170 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

stands a series of volumes, extending over a consider¬ 
able number of years, all of which volumes are in his 
handwriting. But as you go backward there is a 
break, and you come upon the writing of another per¬ 
son, who was getting old apparently, for it is begin¬ 
ning to be a little shaky, and then you know that you 
have gone back as far as the last days of his predeces¬ 
sor. Thirty or forty years more carry you to the time 
when this incumbent began the duties of his office; 
his hand was steady then; and the next volume be¬ 
yond it in date betrays the work of a still different 
writer. All this interests me, but I do not see how it 
is going to interest my reader. I do not feel very 
happy about the Register of Deeds. What can I do 
with him? Of what use is he going to be in my rec¬ 
ord of what I have seen and heard at the breakfast- 
table? The fact of his being one of the boarders was 
not so important that I was obliged to speak of him, 
and I might just as well have drawn on my imagina¬ 
tion and not allowed this dummy to take up the room 
which another guest might have profitably filled at our 
breakfast-table. 

I suppose he will prove a superfluity, but I have 
got him on my hands, and I mean that he shall be 
as little in the way as possible. One always comes 
across people in actual life wh^ have no particular 
business to be where we find them, and whose right to 
be at all is somewhat questionable. 

I am not going to get rid of the Register of Deeds 
by putting him out of the way; but I confess I do not 
see of what service he is going to be to me in my rec¬ 
ord. I have often found, however, that the Disposer 
of men and things understands much better than we 
do how to place his pawns and other pieces on the 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 171 

chess-board of life. A fish more or less in the ocean 
does not seem to amount to much. It is not extrava¬ 
gant to say that any one fish may be considered 
a supernumerary. But when Captain Coram’s ship 
sprung a leak and the carpenter could not stop it, and 
the passengers had made up their minds that it was 
all over with them, all at once, without any apparent 
reason, the pumps began gaining on the leak, and the 
sinking ship to lift herself out of the abyss which was 
swallowing her up. And what do you think it was 
that saved the ship, and Captain Coram, and so in due 
time gave to London that Foundling Hospital which 
he endowed, and under the floor of which he lies 
buried ? Why, it was that very supernumerary fish, 
which we held of so little account, but which had 
wedged itself into the rent of the yawning planks, 
and served to keep out the water until the leak was 
finally stopped. 

I am very sure it was Captain Coram, but I almost 
hope it was somebody else, in order to give some poor 
fellow who is lying in wait for the periodicals a chance 
to correct me. That will make him happy for a 
month, and besides, he will not want to pick a quarrel 
about anything else if he has that splendid triumph. 
You remember Alcibiades and his dog’s tail. 

Here you have the extracts I spoke of from the 
manuscript placed in my hands for revision and emen¬ 
dation. I can understand these alternations of feel¬ 
ing in a young person who has been long absorbed 
in a single pursuit, and in whom the human instincts 
which have been long silent are now beginning to 
find expression. I know well what he wants; a great 
deal better, I think, than he knows himself. 


172 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS. 


H. 

Brief glimpses of the bright celestial spheres, 

False lights, false shadows, vague, uncertain gleams, 
Pale vaporous mists, wan streaks of lurid flame, 

The climbing of the upward-sailing cloud, 

The sinking of the downward-falling star, — 

All these are pictures of the changing moods 
Borne through the midnight stillness of my soul. 

Here am I, bound upon this pillared rock, 

Prey to the vulture of a vast desire 

That feeds upon my life. I burst my bands 

And steal a moment’s freedom from the beak, 

The clinging talons and the shadowing plumes ; 

Then comes the false enchantress, with her song ; 

“ Thou wouldst not lay thy forehead in the dust 
Like the base herd that feeds and breeds and dies ! 

Lo, the fair garlands that I weave for thee, 
Unchanging as the belt Orion wears, 

Bright as the jewels of the seven-starred Crown, 

The spangled stream of Berenice’s hair ! ” 

And so she twines the fetters with the flowers 
Around my yielding limbs, and the fierce bird 
Stoops to his quarry, — then to feed his rage 
Of ravening hunger I must drain my blood 
And let the dew-drenched, poison-breeding night 
Steal all the freshness from my fading cheek, 

And leave its shadows round my caverned eyes. 

All for a line in some unheeded scroll; 

All for a stone that tells to gaping clowns, 

“ Here lies a restless wretch beneath a clod 

Where squats the jealous nightmare men call Fame ! ” 

I marvel not at him who scorns his kind 
And thinks not sadly of the time foretold 
When the old hulk we tread shall be a wreck, 

A slag, a cinder drifting through the sky 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 173 


Without its crew of fools ! We live too long 
And even so are not content to die, 

But load the mould that covers up our bones 
With stones that stand like beggars by the road 
And shew death’s grievous wound and ask for tears ; 
Write our great books to teach men who we are, 

Sing our fine songs that tell in artful phrase 
The secrets of our lives, and plead and pray 
For alms of memory with the after time, 

Those few swift seasons while the earth shall wear 
Its leafy summers, ere its core grows cold 
And the moist life of all that breathes shall die; 

Or as the new-born seer, perchance more wise, 

Would have us deem, before its growing mass, 

Pelted with star-dust, stoned with meteor-balls, 

Heats like a hammered anvil, till at last 
Man and his works and all that stirred itself 
Of its own motion, in the fiery glow 
Turns to a flaming vapor, and our orb 
Shines a new sun for earths that shall be born. 

I am as old as Egypt to myself, 

Brother to them that squared the pyramids 
By the same stars I watch. I read the page 
Where every letter is a glittering world, 

With them who looked from Shinar’s clay-built towers, 
Ere yet the wanderer of the Midland sea 
Had missed the fallen sister of the seven. 

I dwell in spaces vague, remote, unknown, 

Save to the silent few, who, leaving earth, 

Quit all communion with their living time. 

I lose myself in that ethereal void, 

Till I have tired my wings and long to fill 
My breast with denser air, to stand, to walk 
With eyes not raised above my fellow-men. 

Sick of my unwalled, solitary realm, 

I ask to change the myriad lifeless worlds 
I visit as mine own for one poor patch 
Of this dull spheroid and a little breath 
To shape in word or deed to serve my kind. 


174 TIIE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Was ever giant’s dungeon dug so deep, 

Was ever tyrant’s fetter forged so strong, 

Was e’er such deadly poison in the draught 
The false wife mingles for the trusting fool, 

As he whose willing victim is himself, 

Digs, forges, mingles, for his captive soul ? 

VII. 

I was very sure that the old Master was hard at 
work about something, — he is always very busy with 
something, — but I mean something particular. 

Whether it was a question of history or of cosmo¬ 
gony, or whether he was handling a test-tube or a 
blow-pipe; what he was about I did not feel sure; 
but I took it for granted that it was some crucial ques¬ 
tion or other he was at work on, some point bearing 
on the thought of the time. For the Master, I have 
observed, is pretty sagacious in striking for the points 
where his work will be like to tell. We all know that 
class of scientific laborers to whom all facts are alike 
nourishing mental food, and who seem to exercise no 
choice whatever, provided only they can get hold of 
these same indiscriminate facts in quantity sufficient. 
They browse on them, as the animal to which they 
would not like to be compared browses on his thistles. 
But the Master knows the movement of the age he be¬ 
longs to; and if he seems to be busy with what looks 
like a small piece of trivial experimenting, one may 
feel pretty sure that he knows what he is about, and 
that his minute operations are looking to a result that 
will help him towards attaining his great end in life, 
— an insight, so far as his faculties and opportunities 
will allow, into that order of things which he believes 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 175 

he can study with some prospect of taking in its sig¬ 
nificance. 

1 became so anxious to know what particular matter 
he was busy with, that I bad to call upon him to sat¬ 
isfy my curiosity. It was with a little trepidation 
that I knocked at his door. I felt a good deal as one 
might have felt on disturbing an alchemist at his work, 
at the very moment, it might be, when he was about 
to make projection. 

— Come in! — said the Master in his grave, mas¬ 
sive tones. 

I passed through the library with him into a little 
room evidently devoted to his experiments. 

— You have come just at the right moment, —he 
said. —Your eyes are better than mine. I have been 
looking at this flask, and I should like to have you 
look at it. 

It was a small matrass , as one of the elder chemists 
would have called it, containing a fluid, and hermeti¬ 
cally sealed. He held it up at the window; perhaps 
you remember the physician holding a flask to the 
light in Gerard Douw’s “Femme hydropique ”; I 
thought of that fine figure as I looked at him. — 
Look! — said he, — is it clear or cloudy ? 

— You need not ask me that, — I answered. — 
It is very plainly turbid. I should think that some 
sediment had been shaken up in it. What is it, 
Elixir Vitce or Aurum potabile ? 

— Something that means more than alchemy ever 
did! Boiled just three hours, and as clear as a bell 
until within the last few days; since then has been 
clouding up. 

— I began to form a pretty shrewd guess at the 
meaning of all this, and to think I knew very nearly 


176 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


what was coming next. I was right in my conjecture* 
The Master broke off the sealed end of his little flask, 
took out a small portion of the fluid on a glass rod, 
and placed it on a slip of glass in the usual way for a 
microscopic examination. 

— One thousand diameters, — he said, as he placed 
it on the stage of the microscope.—We shall find 
signs of life, of course. — He bent over the instrument 
and looked but an instant. 

— There they are! — he exclaimed, — look in. 

I looked in and saw some objects not very unlike 
these:— 


O O 



The straight linear bodies were darting backward 
and forward in every direction. The wavy ones were 
wriggling about like eels or water-snakes. The round 
ones were spinning on their axes and rolling in every 
direction. All of them were in a state of incessant 
activity, as if perpetually seeking something and never 
finding it. 

They are tough, the germs of these little bodies, — 
said the Master. —Three hours’ boiling hasn’t killed 
’em. Now, then, let us see what has been the effect 
of six hours’ boiling. 

He took up another flask just like the first, con¬ 
taining fluid and hermetically sealed in the same way. 

— Boiled just three hours longer than the other, — 
he said, — six hours in all. This is the experimentum 
crucis. Do you see any cloudiness in it? 

— Not a sign of it; it is as clear as crystal, except 
that there may be a little sediment at the bottom. 

— That is nothing. The liquid is clear. We shall 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 177 

find no signs of life. — He put a minute drop of the 
liquid under the microscope as before. Nothing 
stirred. Nothing to be seen but a clear circle of light. 
We looked at it again and again, but with the same 
result. 

— Six hours kill ’em all, according to this experi¬ 
ment, — said the Master. — Good as far as it goes. 
One more negative result. Do you know what would 
have happened if that liquid had been clouded, and we 
had foimd life in the sealed flask? Sir, if that liquid 
had held life in it the Vatican would have trembled 
to hear it, and there would have been anxious ques¬ 
tionings and ominous whisperings in the halls of Lam¬ 
beth palace! The accepted cosmogonies on trial, sir! 
Traditions, sanctities, creeds, ecclesiastical establish¬ 
ments, all shaking to know whether my little six¬ 
penny flask of fluid looks muddy or not! I don’t 
know whether to laugh or shudder. The thought 
of an oecumenical council having its leading feature 
dislocated by my trifling experiment! The thought, 
again, of the mighty revolution in human beliefs and 
affairs that might grow out of the same insignificant 
little phenomenon. A wineglassful of clear liquid 
growing muddy. If we had found a wriggle, or a 
zigzag, or a shoot from one side to the other, in this 
last flask, what a scare there would have been, to be 
sure, in the schools of the prophets! Talk about your 
megatherium and your megalosaurus , — what are 
these to the bacterium and the vibrio ? These are the 
dreadful monsters of to-day. If they show them¬ 
selves where they have no business, the little rascals 
frighten honest folks worse than ever people were 
frightened by the Dragon of Rhodes! 

The Master gets going sometimes, there is no deny- 


178 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ing it, until his imagination runs away with him. He 
had been trying, as the reader sees, one of those 
curious experiments in spontaneous generation, as it 
is called, which have been so often instituted of late 
years, and by none more thoroughly than by that 
eminent American student of nature 1 whose process 
he had imitated with a result like his. 

We got talking over these matters among us the 
next morning at the breakfast-table. 

We must agree they couldn’t stand six hours’ 
boiling, — I said. 

— Good for the Pope of Rome! — exclaimed the 
Master. 

— The Landlady drew back with a certain expres¬ 
sion of dismay in her countenance. She hoped he 
did n’t want the Pope to make any more converts in 
this country. She had heard a sermon only last Sab¬ 
bath, and the minister had made it out, she thought, 
as plain as could be, that the Pope was the Man of 
Sin and that the Church of Rome was— Well, there 
was very strong names applied to her in Scripture. 

What was good for the Pope was good for your 
minister, too, my dear madam, — said the Master. — 
Good for everybody that is afraid of what people call 
“science.” If it should prove that dead things come 
to life of themselves, it would be awkward, you know, 
because then somebody will get up and say if one 
dead thing made itself alive another might, and so per¬ 
haps the earth peopled itself without any help. Pos¬ 
sibly the difficulty wouldn’t be so great as many peo¬ 
ple suppose. We might perhaps find room for a 
Creator after all, as we do now, though we see a little 
brown seed grow till it sucks up the juices of half an 
1 Professor Jeffries Wyman. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 179 

acre of ground, apparently all by its own inherent 
power. That does not stagger us; I am not sure that 
it would if Mr. Crosse’s or Mr. Weekes’s acarus 
should show himself all of a sudden, as they said he 
did, in certain mineral mixtures acted on by electri¬ 
city. 

The Landlady was off soundings, and looking va¬ 
cant enough by this time. 

The Master turned to me. —Don’t think too much 
of the result of our one experiment. It means some¬ 
thing, because it confirms those other experiments of 
which it was a copy; but we must remember that a 
hundred negatives don’t settle such a question. Life 
does get into the world somehow. You don’t suppose 
Adam had the cutaneous unpleasantness politely called 
psora, do you? 

— Hardly, — I answered. — He must have been a 
walking hospital if he carried all the maladies about 
him which have plagued his descendants. 

— Well, then, how did the little beast which is 
peculiar to that special complaint intrude himself into 
the Order of Things? You don’t suppose there was 
a special act of creation for the express purpose of 
bestowing that little wretch on humanity, do you? 

I thought, on the whole, I would n’t answer that 
question. 

— You and I are at work on the same problem, — 
said the Young Astronomer to the Master. —I have 
looked into a microscope now and then, and I have 
seen that perpetual dancing about of minute atoms in 
a fluid, which you call molecular motion. Just so, 
when I look through my telescope I see the star-dust 
whirling about in the infinite expanse of ether; or 
if I do not see its motion, I know that it is only on 


180 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


account of its immeasurable distance. Matter and 
motion everywhere; void and rest nowhere. You ask 
why your restless microscopic atoms may not come 
together and become self-conscious and self-moving 
organisms. I ask why my telescopic star-dust may 
not come together and grow and organize into habita¬ 
ble worlds, — the ripened fruit on the branches of the 
tree Yggdrasil, if I may borrow from our friend the 
Poet’s province. It frightens people, though, to hear 
the suggestion that worlds shape themselves from star- 
mist. It does not trouble them at all to see the wa¬ 
tery spheres that round themselves into being out of 
the vapors floating over us; they are nothing but rain¬ 
drops. But if a planet can grow as a rain-drop grows, 
why then — It was a great comfort to these timid 
folk when Lord Posse’s telescope resolved certain neb¬ 
ulae into star-clusters. Sir John Herschel would have 
told them that this made little difference in accounting 
for the formation of worlds by aggregation, but at 
any rate it was a comfort to them. 

— These people have always been afraid of the as¬ 
tronomers, — said the Master. — They were shy, you 
know, of the Copernican system, for a long while; 
well they might be with an oubliette waiting for them 
if they ventured to think that the earth moved round 
the sun. Science settled that point finally for them, 
at length, and then it was all right, — when there was 
no use in disputing the fact any longer. By and by 
geology began turning up fossils that told extraordi¬ 
nary stories about the duration of life upon our planet. 
What subterfuges were not used to get rid of their 
evidence! Think of a man seeing the fossilized skel¬ 
eton of an animal split out of a quarry, his teeth worn 
down by mastication, and the remains of food still vis- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 181 

ible in liis interior, and, in order to get rid of a piece 
of evidence contrary to the traditions he holds to, seri¬ 
ously maintaining that this skeleton never belonged 
to a living creature, but was created with just these 
appearances; a make-believe, a sham, a Barnum’s- 
mermaid contrivance to amuse its Creator and impose 
upon his intelligent children! And now people talk 
about geological epochs and hundreds of millions of 
years in the planet’s history as calmly as if tjhey were 
discussing the age of their deceased great-grandmo¬ 
thers. Ten or a dozen years ago people said Sh! Sh! 
if you ventured to meddle with any question supposed 
to involve a doubt of the generally accepted Hebrew 
traditions. To-day such questions are recognized as 
perfectly fair subjects for general conversation; not in 
the basement story, perhaps, or among the rank and 
file of the curbstone congregations, but among intelli¬ 
gent and educated persons. You may preach about 
them in your pulpit, you may lecture about them, you 
may talk about them with the first sensible-looking 
person you happen to meet, you may write magazine 
articles about them, and the editor need not expect to 
receive remonstrances from angry subscribers and with¬ 
drawals of subscriptions, as he would have been sure 
to not a great many years ago. Why, you may go to 
a tea-party where the clergyman’s wife shows her best 
cap and his daughters display their shining ringlets, 
and you will hear the company discussing the Dar¬ 
winian theory of the origin of the human race as if it 
were as harmless a question as that of the lineage of a 
spinster’s lapdog. You may see a fine lady who is as 
particular in her genuflections as any Buddhist or Ma¬ 
hometan saint in his manifestations of reverence, who 
will talk over the anthropoid ape, the supposed founder 


182 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of the family to which we belong, and even go back 
with you to the acephalous mollusk, first cousin to 
the clams and mussels, whose rudimental spine was the 
hinted prophecy of humanity; all this time never 
dreaming, apparently, that what she takes for a mat¬ 
ter of curious speculation involves the whole future of 
human progress and destiny. 

I can’t help thinking that if we had talked as freely 
as we can and do now in the days of the first boarder 
at this table, — I mean the one who introduced it to 
the public, — it would have sounded a good deal more 
aggressively than it does now. — The old Master got 
rather warm in talking; perhaps the consciousness 
of having a number of listeners had something to do 
with it. 

— This whole business is an open question, — he 
said,—and there is no use in saying, “Hush! don’t 
talk about such things! ” People do talk about ’em 
everywhere; and if they don’t talk about ’em they 
think about ’em, and that is worse, — if there is any¬ 
thing bad about such questions, that is. If for the 
Fall of man, science comes to substitute the RISE of 
man, sir, it means the utter disintegration of all the 
spiritual pessimisms which have been like a spasm in 
the heart and a cramp in the intellect of men for so 
many centuries. And yet who dares t-o say that it is 
not a perfectly legitimate and proper question to be 
discussed, without the slightest regard to the fears or 
the threats of Pope or prelate? 

Sir, I believe, — the Master rose from his chair as 
he spoke, and said in a deep and solemn tone, but 
without any declamatory vehemence, — sir, I believe 
that we are at this moment in what will be recognized 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 183 


not many centuries hence as one of the late watches in 
the night of the dark ages. There is a twilight ray, 
beyond question. We know something of the uni¬ 
verse, a very little, and, strangely enough, we know 
most of what is farthest from us. We have weighed 
the planets and analyzed the flames of the sun and 
stars. We predict their movements as if they were 
machines we ourselves had made and regulated. We 
know a good deal about the earth on which we live. 
But the study of man has been so completely sub¬ 
jected to our preconceived opinions, that we have got 
to begin all over again. We have studied anthropol¬ 
ogy through theology; we have now to begin the 
study of theology through anthropology. Until we 
have exhausted the human element in every form of 
belief, and that can only be done by what we may call 
comparative spiritual anatomy, we cannot begin to 
deal with the alleged extra-human elements without 
blundering into all imaginable puerilities. If you 
think for one moment that there is not a single reli¬ 
gion in the world which does not come to us through 
the medium of a preexisting language; and if you re¬ 
member that this language embodies absolutely noth¬ 
ing but human conceptions and human passions, you 
will see at once that every religion presupposes its own 
elements as already existing in those to whom it is 
addressed. I once went to a church in London and 
heard the famous Edward Irving preach, and heard 
some of his congregation speak in the strange words 
characteristic of their miraculous gift of tongues. I 
had a respect for the logical basis of this singular 
phenomenon. I have always thought it was natural 
that any celestial message should demand a language 
of its own, only to be understood by divine illumina- 


184 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

tion. All human words tend, of course, to stop short 
in human meaning. And the more I hear the most 
sacred terms employed, the more I am satisfied that 
they have entirely and radically different meanings in 
the minds of those who use them. Yet they deal with 
them as if they were as definite as mathematical quan¬ 
tities or geometrical figures. What would become of 
arithmetic if the figure 2 meant three for one man and 
five for another and twenty for a third, and all the 
other numerals were in the same way variable quan¬ 
tities ? Mighty intelligent correspondence business 
men would have with each other! But how is this 
any worse than the difference of opinion which led a 
famous clergyman to say to a brother theologian, 
“Oh, I see, my dear sir, your God is my Devil” 

Man has been studied proudly, contemptuously, 
rather, from the point of view supposed to be author¬ 
itatively settled. The self-sufficiency of egotistic na¬ 
tures was never more fully shown than in the exposi¬ 
tions of the worthlessness and wretchedness of their 
fellow-creatures given by the dogmatists who have 
“gone back,” as the vulgar phrase is, on their race, 
their own flesh and blood. Did you ever read what 
Mr. Bancroft says about Calvin in his article on Jon¬ 
athan Edwards ? — and mighty well said it is too, in 
my judgment. Let me remind you of it, whether 
you have read it or not. “Setting himself up over 
against the privileged classes, he, with a loftier pride 
than theirs , revealed the power of a yet higher order 
of nobility, not of a registered ancestry of fifteen gen¬ 
erations, but one absolutely spotless in its escutcheon, 
preordained in the council chamber of eternity.” I 
think you ’ll find I have got that sentence right, word 
for word, and there ’s a great deal more in it than 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 185 

many good folks who call themselves after the re¬ 
former seem to be aware of. The Pope put his foot 
on the neck of kings, but Calvin and his cohort 
crushed the whole human race under their heels in 
the name of the Lord of Hosts. Now, you see, the 
point that people don’t understand is the absolute and 
utter humility of science, in opposition to this doc¬ 
trinal self-sufficiency. I don’t doubt this may sound 
a little paradoxical at first, but I think you will find 
it is all right. You remember the courtier and the 
monarch, —Louis the Fourteenth, wasn’t it? — never 
mind, give the poor fellows that live by setting you 
right a chance. “What o’clock is it?” says the 
king. “Just whatever o’clock your Majesty pleases,” 
says the courtier. I venture to say the monarch was 
a great deal more humble than the follower, who 
pretended that his master was superior to such trifling 
facts as the revolution of the planet. It was the same 
thing, you remember, with King Canute and the tide 
on the sea-shore. The king accepted the scientific 
fact of the tide’s rising. The loyal hangers-on, who 
believed in divine right, were too proud of the com¬ 
pany they found themselves in to make any such hu¬ 
miliating admission. But there are people, and plenty 
of them, to-day, who will dispute facts just as clear 
to those who have taken the pains to learn what is 
known about them, as that of the tide’s rising. They 
don’t like to admit these facts, because they throw 
doubt upon some of their cherished opinions. We 
are getting on towards the last part of this nineteenth 
century. What we have gained is not so much in 
positive knowledge, though that is a good deal, as it 
is in the freedom of discussion of every subject that 
comes within the range of observation and inference. 


186 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

How long is it since Mrs. Piozzi wrote, — “Let me 
hope that you will not pursue geology till it leads you 
into doubts destructive of all comfort in this world 
and all happiness in the next”? 

The Master paused and I remained silent, for I 
was thinking things I could not say. 

— It is well always to have a woman near by when 
one is talking on this class of subjects. Whether 
there will be three or four women to one man in 
heaven is a question which I must leave to those who 
talk as if they knew all about the future condition of 
the race to answer. But very certainly there is much 
more of hearty faith, much more of spiritual life, 
among women than among men, in this world. They 
need faith to support them more than men do, for 
they have a great deal less to call them out of them¬ 
selves, and it comes easier to them, for their habitual 
state of dependence teaches them to trust in others. 
When they become voters, if they ever do, it may be 
feared that the pews will lose what the ward-rooms 
gain. Relax a woman’s hold on man, and her knee- 
joints will soon begin to stiffen. Self-assertion brings 
out many fine qualities, but it does not promote devo¬ 
tional habits. 

I remember some such thoughts as this were passing 
through my mind while the Master was talking. I 
noticed that the Lady was listening to the conver¬ 
sation with a look of more than usual interest. We 
men have the talk mostly to ourselves at this table; 
the Master, as you have found out, is fond of mono¬ 
logues, and I myself — well, I suppose I must own to 
a certain love for the reverberated music of my own 
accents; at any rate, the Master and I do most of the 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 187 

talking. But others help us do the listening. 1 think 
I can show that they listen to some purpose. I am 
going to surprise my reader with a letter which I re¬ 
ceived very shortly after the conversation took place 
which I have just reported. It is of course by a 
special license, such as belongs to the supreme prerog¬ 
ative of an author, that I am enabled to present it to 
him. He need ask no questions: it is not his affair 
how I obtained the right to give publicity to a private 
communication. I have become somewhat more inti¬ 
mately acquainted with the writer of it than in the 
earlier period of my connection with this establish¬ 
ment, and I think I may say have gained her confi¬ 
dence to a very considerable degree. 

My dear Sir : The conversations I have had with 
you, limited as they have been, have convinced me 
that I am quite safe in addressing you with freedom 
on a subject which interests me, and others more than 
myself. We at our end of the table have been listen¬ 
ing, more or less intelligently, to the discussions going 
on between two or three of you gentlemen on matters 
of solemn import to us all. This is nothing very new 
to me. I have been used, from an early period of 
my life, to hear the discussion of grave questions, 
both in politics and religion. I have seen gentlemen 
at my father’s table get as warm over a theological 
point of dispute as in talking over their political dif¬ 
ferences. I rather think it has always been very much 
so, in bad as well as in good company; for you re¬ 
member how Milton’s fallen angels amused themselves 
with disputing on “providence, foreknowledge, will, 
and fate,” and it was the same thing in that club 
Goldsmith writes so pleasantly about. Indeed, why 


188 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

should not people very often come, in the course of 
conversation, to the one subject which lies beneath 
all else about which our thoughts are occupied? And 
what more natural than that one should be inquiring 
about what another has accepted and ceased to have 
any doubts concerning ? It seems to me all right that 
at the 'proper time , in the proper place , those who are 
less easily convinced than their neighbors should have 
the fullest liberty of calling to account all the opinions 
which others receive without question. Somebody 
must stand sentry at the outposts of belief, and it is 
a sentry’s business, I believe, to challenge every one 
who comes near him, friend or foe. 

I want you to understand fully that I am not one 
of those poor nervous creatures who are frightened out 
of their wits when any question is started that implies 
the disturbance of their old beliefs. I manage to see 
some of the periodicals, and now and then dip a little 
way into a new book which deals with these curious 
questions you were talking about, and others like them. 
You know they find their way almost everywhere. 
They do not worry me in the least. When I was a 
little girl, they used to say that if you put a horsehair 
into a tub of water it would turn into a snake in the 
course of a few days. That did not seem to me so 
very much stranger than it was that an egg should 
turn into a chicken. What can I say to that f Only 
that it is the Lord’s doings, and marvellous in my 
eyes; and if our philosophical friend should find some 
little live creatures, or what seem to be live creatures, 
in any of his messes, I should say as much, and no 
more. You do not think I would shut up my Bible 
and Prayer-Book because there is one more thing I do 
not understand in a world where I understand so very 
little of all the wonders that surround me ? 


THE POET AT TIIE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 189 

It may be very wrong to pay any attention to those 
speculations about the origin of mankind which seem 
to conflict with the Sacred Record. But perhaps 
there is some way of reconciling them, as there is of 
making the seven days of creation harmonize with 
modern geology. At least, these speculations are 
curious enough in themselves; and I have seen so 
many good and handsome children come of parents 
who were anything but virtuous and comely, that I can 
believe in almost any amount of improvement taking 
place in a tribe of living beings, if time and oppor¬ 
tunity favor it. I have read in books of natural his¬ 
tory that dogs came originally from wolves. When I 
remember my little Flora, who, as I used to think, 
could do everything but talk, it does not seem to me 
that she was much nearer her savage ancestors than 
some of the horrid cannibal wretches are to their 
neighbors the great apes. 

You see that I am tolerably liberal in my habit of 
looking at all these questions. We women drift 
along with the current of the times, listening, in our 
quiet way, to the discussions going on round us in 
books and in conversation, and shift the phrases in 
which we think and talk with something of the same 
ease as that with which we change our style of dress 
from year to year. I doubt if you of the other sex 
know what an effect this habit of accommodating our 
tastes to changing standards has upon us. Nothing 
is fixed in them, as you know; the very law of fashion 
is change. I suspect we learn from our dressmakers 
to shift the costume of our minds, and slip on the 
new fashions of thinking all the more easily because 
we have been accustomed to new styles of dressing 
every season. 


190 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

It frightens me to see how much I have written 
without having yet said a word of what I began this 
letter on purpose to say. I have taken so much space 
in “defining my position,” to borrow the politicians’ 
phrase, that I begin to fear you will be out of pa¬ 
tience before you come to the part of my letter I care ^ 
most about your reading. 

What I want to say is this. When these matters 
are talked about before persons of different ages and 
various shades of intelligence, I think one ought to be 
very careful that his use of language does not injure 
the sensibilities, perhaps blunt the reverential feel¬ 
ings, of those who are listening to him. You of the 
sterner sex say that we women have intuitions, but 
not logic, as our birthright. I shall not commit my 
sex by conceding this to be true as a whole, but I will 
accept the first half of it, and I will go so far as to 
say that we do not always care to follow out a train of 
thought until it ends in a blind cut de sac , as some of 
what are called the logical people are fond of doing. 

Now I want to remind you that religion is not a 
matter of intellectual luxury to those of us who are 
interested in it, but something very different. It is 
our life, and more than our life; for that is measured 
by pulse-beats, but our religious consciousness par¬ 
takes of the Infinite, towards which it is constantly 
yearning. It is very possible that a hundred or five 
hundred years from now the forms of religious belief 
may be so altered that we should hardly know them. 
But the sense of dependence on Divine influence and 
the need of communion with the unseen and eternal 
will be then just what they are now. It is not the- 
geologist’s hammer, or the astronomer’s telescope, or 
the naturalist s microscope, that is going to take away 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 191 

the need of the human soul for that Rock to rest upon 
which is higher than itself, that Star which never sets, 
that all-pervading Presence which gives life to all the 
least moving atoms of the immeasurable universe. 

I have no fears for myself, and listen very quietly 
to all your debates. I go from your philosophical dis¬ 
cussions to the reading of Jeremy Taylor’s “Rule and 
Exercises of Holy Hying ” without feeling that I have 
unfitted myself in the least degree for its solemn re¬ 
flections. And, as I have mentioned his name, I can¬ 
not help saying that I do not believe that good man 
himself would have ever shown the bitterness to those 
who seem to be at variance with the received doc¬ 
trines which one may see in some of the newspapers 
that call themselves “religious.” I have kept a few 
old books from my honored father’s library, and 
among them is another of his which I always thought 
had more true Christianity in its title than there is in 
a good many whole volumes. I am going to take the 
book down, or up, —for it is not a little one, —and 
write out the title, which, I dare say, you remember, 
and very likely you have the book. “Discourse of 
the Liberty of Prophesying, showing the Unreason¬ 
ableness of prescribing to other Men’s Faith, and the 
Iniquity of persecuting Different Opinions.” 

Now, my dear sir, I am sure you believe that I want 
to be liberal and reasonable, and not to act like those 
weak alarmists who, whenever the silly sheep begin 
to skip as if something was after them, and huddle 
together in their fright, are sure there must be a bear 
or a lion coming to eat them up. But for all that, I 
want to beg you to handle some of these points, which 
are so involved in the creed of a good many well-in¬ 
tentioned persons that you cannot separate them from 


192 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

it without picking their whole belief to pieces, with 
more thought for them than you might think at first 
they were entitled to. I have no doubt you gentlemen 
are as wise as serpents, and I want you to be as harm¬ 
less as doves. 

The Young Girl who sits by me has, I know, strong 
religious instincts. Instead of setting her out to ask 
all sorts of questions, I would rather, if I had my way, 
encourage her to form a habit of attending to religious 
duties, and make the most of the simple faith in which 
she was bred. I think there are a good many ques¬ 
tions young persons may safely postpone to a more 
convenient season; and as this young creature is over¬ 
worked, I hate to have her excited by the fever of 
doubt which it cannot be denied is largely prevailing 
in our time. 

I know you must have looked on our other young 
friend, who has devoted himself to the sublimest of the 
sciences, with as much interest as I do. When I was 
a little girl I used to write out a line of Young’s as a 
copy in my writing-book, 

“ An undevout astronomer is mad ” ; 

but I do not now feel quite so sure that the contem¬ 
plation of all the multitude of remote worlds does not 
tend to weaken the idea of a personal Deity. It is 
not so much that nebular theory which worries me, 
when I think about this subject, as a kind of bewil¬ 
derment when I try to conceive of a consciousness fill¬ 
ing all those frightful blanks of space they talk about. 
I sometimes doubt whether that young man worships 
anything but the stars. They tell me that many 
young students of science like him never see the inside 
of a church. I cannot help wishing they did. It hu- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 193 


manizes people, quite apart from any higher influence 
it exerts upon them. One reason, perhaps, why they 
do not care to go to places of worship is that they are 
liable to hear the questions they know something about 
handled in sermons by those who know very much less 
about them. And so they lose a great deal. Almost 
every human being, however vague his notions of the 
Power addressed, is capable of being lifted and sol¬ 
emnized by the exercise of public prayer. When I 
was a young girl we travelled in Europe, and I vis¬ 
ited Ferney with my parents; and I remember we all 
stopped before a chapel, and I read upon its front, — 
I knew Latin enough to understand it, I am pleased 
to say, — Deo erexit Voltaire . I never forgot it; and 
knowing what a sad scoffer he was at most sacred 
things, I could not but be impressed with the fact that 
even he was not satisfied with himself, until he had 
shown his devotion in a public and lasting form. 

We all want religion sooner or later. I am afraid 
there are some who have no natural turn for it, as 
there are persons without an ear for music, to which, 
if I remember right, I heard one of you comparing 
what you called religious genius. But sorrow and 
misery bring even these to know what it means, in a 
great many instances. May I not say to you, my 
friend, that I am one who has learned the secret of the 
inner life by the discipline of trials in the life of out¬ 
ward circumstance? I can remember the time when 
I thought more about the shade of color in a ribbon, 
whether it matched my complexion or not, than I did 
about my spiritual interests in this world or the next. 
It was needful that I should learn the meaning of that 
text, “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” 

Since I have been taught in the school of trial I 


194 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

have felt, as I never could before, how precious an in¬ 
heritance is the smallest patrimony of faith. When 
everything seemed gone from me, I found I had still 
one possession. The bruised reed that I had never 
leaned on became my staff. The smoking flax which 
had been a worry to my eyes burst into flame, and I 
lighted the taper at it which has since guided all my 
footsteps. And I am but one of the thousands who 
have had the same experience. They have been 
through the depths of affliction, and know the needs 
of the human soul. It will find its God in the unseen, 
— Father, Saviour, Divine Spirit, Virgin Mother,— 
it must and will breathe its longings and its griefs 
into the heart of a Being capable of understanding all 
its necessities and sympathizing with all its woes. 

I am jealous, yes, I own I am jealous of any word, 
spoken or written, that would tend to impair that 
birthright of reverence which becomes for so many in 
after years the basis of a deeper religious sentiment. 
And yet, as I have said, I cannot and will not shut 
my eyes to the problems which may seriously affect 
our modes of conceiving the eternal truths on which, 
and by which, our souls must live. What a fearful 
time is this into which we poor sensitive and timid 
creatures are born! I suppose the life of every cen¬ 
tury has more or less special resemblance to that of 
some particular Apostle. I cannot help thinking this 
century has Thomas for its model. How do you sup¬ 
pose the other Apostles felt when that experimental 
philosopher explored the wounds of the Being who 
to them was divine with his inquisitive forefinger? 
In our time that finger has multiplied itself into ten 
thousand thousand implements of research, challeng¬ 
ing all mysteries, weighing the world as in a balance, 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 195 

and sifting through its prisms and spectroscopes the 
light that comes from the throne of the Eternal. 

Pity us, dear Lord, pity us! The peace in believ¬ 
ing which belonged to other ages is not for us. 
Again Thy wounds are opened that we may know 
whether it is the blood of one like ourselves which 
flows from them, or whether it is a Divinity that is 
bleeding for His creatures. Wilt Thou not take the 
doubt of Thy children whom the time commands to try 
all things in the place of the unquestioning faith of 
earlier and simpler-hearted generations? We too 
have need of Thee. Thy martyrs in other ages were 
cast into the flames, but no fire could touch their im¬ 
mortal and indestructible faith. We sit in safety and 
in peace, so far as these poor bodies are concerned; 
but our cherished beliefs, the hopes, the trust that 
stayed the hearts of those we loved who have gone 
before us, are cast into the fiery furnace of an age 
which is fast turning to dross the certainties and the 
sanctities once prized as our most precious inheri¬ 
tance. 

You will understand me, my dear sir, and all my 
solicitudes and apprehensions. Had I never been as¬ 
sailed by the questions that meet all thinking persons 
in our time, I might not have thought so anxiously 
about the risk of perplexing others. I know as well 
as you must that there are many articles of belief 
clinging to the skirts of our time which are the be¬ 
quests of the ages of ignorance that God winked at. 
But for all that I would train a child in the nurture 
and admonition of the Lord, according to the sim¬ 
plest and best creed I could disentangle from those 
barbarisms, and I would in every way try to keep up 
in young persons that standard of reverence for all 


196 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


sacred subjects which may, without any violent tran¬ 
sition, grow and ripen into the devotion of later years. 

Believe me, 

Very sincerely yours, 

I have thought a good deal about this letter and the 
writer of it lately. She seemed at first removed to 
a distance from all of us, but here I find myself in 
somewhat near relations with her. What has sur¬ 
prised me more than that, however, is to find that she 
is becoming so much acquainted with the Register of 
Deeds. Of all persons in the world, I should least 
have thought of him as like to be interested in her, 
and still less, if possible, of her fancying him. I can 
only say they have been in pretty close conversation 
several times of late, and, if I dared to think it of so 
very calm and dignified a personage, I should say 
that her color was a little heightened after one or 
more of these interviews. No! that would be too 
absurd! But I begin to think nothing is absurd in 
the matter of the relations of the two sexes; and if 
this high-bred woman fancies the attentions of a piece 
of human machinery like this elderly individual, it 
is none of my business. 

I have been at work on some more of the Young 
Astronomer’s lines. I find less occasion for meddling 
with them as he grows more used to versification. I 
think I could analyze the processes going on in his 
mind, and the conflict of instincts which he cannot in 
the nature of things understand. But it is as well to 
give the reader a chance to find out for himself what 
is going on in the young man’s heart and intellect. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS. 

IH. 

The snows that glittered on the disk of Mars 
Have melted, and the planet’s fiery orb 
Rolls in the crimson summer of its year; 

But what to me the summer or the snow 
Of worlds that throb with life in forms unknown, 
If life indeed be theirs ; I heed not these. 

My heart is simply human ; all my care 
For them whose dust is fashioned like mine own ; 
These ache with cold and hunger, live in pain, 
And shake with fear of worlds more full of woe ; 
There may be others worthier of my love, 

But such I kuow not save through these 1 know. 

There are two veils of language, hid beneath 
Whose sheltering folds, we dare to be ourselves ; 
And not that other self which nods and smiles 
And babbles in our name ; the one is Prayer, 
Lending its licensed freedom to the tongue 
That tells our sorrows and our sins to Heaven ; 
The other, Verse, that throws its spangled web 
Around our naked speech and makes it bold. 

I, whose best prayer is silence ; sitting dumb 
In the great temple where I nightly serve 
Him who is throned in light, have dared to claim 
The poet’s franchise, though I may not hope 
To wear his garland ; hear me while I tell 
My story in such form as poets use, 

But breathed in fitful whispers, as the wind 
Sighs and then slumbers, wakes and sighs again. 

Thou Vision, floating in the breathless air 
Between me and the fairest of the stars, 

I tell my lonely thoughts as unto thee. 

Look not for marvels of the scholar’s pen 
In my rude measure ; I can only show 
A slender-margined, unillumined page, 

And trust its meaning to the flattering eye 


198 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


That reads it in the gracious light of love. 

Ah, wouldst thou clothe thyself in breathing shape 
And nestle at my side, my voice should lend 
Whate’er my verse may lack of tender rhythm 
To make thee listen. 

I have stood entranced 

When, with her fingers wandering o’er the keys, 

The white enchantress with the golden hair 
Breathed all her soul through some unvalued rhyme ; 
Some flower of song that long had lost its bloom ; 

Lo ! its dead summer kindled as she sang ! 

The sweet contralto, like the ringdove’s coo, 

Thrilled it with brooding, fond, caressing tones, 

And the pale minstrel’s passion lived again, 

Tearful and trembling as a dewy rose 

The wind has shaken till it fills the air 

With light and fragrance. Such the wondrous charm 

A song can borrow when the bosom throbs 

That lends it breath. 

So from the poet’s lips 

His verse sounds doubly sweet, for none like him 
Feels every cadence of its wave-like flow ; 

He lives the passion over, while he reads, 

That shook him as he sang his lofty strain, 

And pours his life through each resounding line, 

As ocean, when the stormy winds are hushed, 

Still rolls and thunders through his billowy caves. 

Let me retrace the record of the years 
That made me what I am. A man most wise, 

But overworn with toil and bent with age, 

Sought me to be his scholar, — me, run wild 
From books and teachers, — kindled in my soul 
The love of knowledge ; led me to his tower, 

Showed me the wonders of the midnight realm 
His hollow sceptre ruled, or seemed to rule, 

Taught me the mighty secrets of the spheres, 

Trained me to find the glimmering specks of light 
Beyond the unaided sense, and on my chart 
To string them one by one, in order due, 

As on a rosary a saint his beads. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 199 


I was his only scholar ; I became 
The echo to his thought; whate’er he knew 
Was mine for asking ; so from year to year 
We wrought together, till there came a time 
When I, the learner, was the master half 
Of the twinned being in tfie dorne-crowned tower. 

Minds roll in paths like planets ; they revolve 
This in a larger, that a narrower ring, 

But round they come at last to that same phase, 
That self-same light and shade they showed before. 

I learned his annual and his monthly tale, 

His weekly axiom and his daily phrase, 

I felt them coming in the laden air, 

And watched them laboring up to vocal breath, 

Even as the first-born at his father’s board 
Knows ere he speaks the too familiar jest 
Is on its way, by some mysterious sign 
Forewarned, the click before the striking bell. 

He shrivelled as I spread my growing leaves, 

Till trust and reverence changed to pitying care ; 

He lived for me in what he once had been, 

But I for him, a shadow, a defence, 

The guardian of his fame, his guide, his staff, 

Leaned on so long he fell if left alone. 

I was his eye, his ear, his cunning hand, 

Love was my spur and longing after fame, 

But his the goading thorn of sleepless age 

That sees its shortening span, its lengthening shades, 

That clutches what it may with eager grasp, 

And drops at last with empty, outstretched hands. 

All this he dreamed not. He would sit him down 
Thinking to work his problems as of old, 

And find the star he thought so plain a blur, 

The columned figures labyrinthine wilds 
Without my comment, blind and senseless scrawls 
That vexed him with their riddles ; he would strive 
And struggle for a while, and then his eye 
Would lose its light, and over all his mind 


200 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


The cold gray mist would settle ; and erelong 
The darkness fell, and I was left alone. 

Alone ! no climber of an Alpine cliff. 

No Arctic venturer on the w^veless sea, 

Feels the dread stillness round him as it chills 
The heart of him who leaves the slumbering earth 
To watch the silent worlds that crowd the sky. 

Alone ! And as the shepherd leaves his flock 
To feed upon the hillside, he meanwhile 
Finds converse in the warblings of the pipe 
Himself has fashioned for his vacant hour, 

So have I grown companion to myself, 

And to the wandering spirits of the air 
That smile and whisper round us in our dreams. 
Thus have I learned to search if I may know 
The whence and why of all beneath the stars 
And all beyond them, and to weigh my life 
As in a balance, — poising good and ill 
Against each other, — asking of the Power 
That flung me forth among the whirling worlds, 

If I am heir to any inborn right, 

Or only as an atom of the dust 

That every wind may blow where’er it will. 

I am not humble ; I was shown my place, 

Clad in such robes as Nature had at hand; 

Took what she gave, not chose ; I know no shame, 
No fear for being simply what I am. 

I am not proud, I hold my every breath 
At Nature’s mercy. I am as a babe 
Borne in a giant’s arms, he knows not where ; 
Each several heart-beat, counted like the coin 
A miser reckons, is a special gift 
As from an unseen hand ; if that withhold 
Its bounty for a moment, I am left 
A clod upon the earth to which I fall. 

Something I find in me that well might claim 
The love of beings in a sphere above 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 201 


This doubtful twilight world of right and wrong ; 
Something that shows me of the self-same clay 
That creeps or swims or flies in humblest form. 

Had I been asked, before I left my bed 
Of shapeless dust, what clothing I would wear, 

I would have said, More angel and less worm ; 

But for their sake who are even such as I, 

Of the same mingled blood, I would not choose 
To hate that meaner portion of myself 
Which makes me brother to the least of men. 

I dare not be a coward with my lips 
Who dare to question all things in my soul ; 

Some men may find their wisdom on their knees, 
Some prone and grovelling in the dust like slaves ; 
Let the meek glow-worm glisten in the dew ; 

I ask to lift my taper to the sky 

As they who hold their lamps above their heads, 

Trusting the larger currents up aloft, 

Rather than crossing eddies round their breast, 
Threatening with every puff the flickering blaze. 

My life shall be a challenge, not a truce ! 

This is my homage to the mightier powers, 

To ask my boldest question, undismayed 
By muttered threats that some hysteric sense 
Of wrong or insult will convulse the throne 
Where wisdom reigns supreme ; and if I err, 

They all must err who have to feel their way 
As bats that fly at noon ; for what are we 
But creatures of the night, dragged forth by day, 
Who needs must stumble, and with stammering steps 
Spell out their paths in syllables of pain ? 

Thou wilt not hold in scorn the child who dares 
Look up to Thee, the Father, —dares to ask 
More than Thy wisdom answers. From Thy hand 
The worlds were cast ; yet every leaflet claims 
From that same hand its little shining sphere 
Of star-lit dew ; thine image, the great sun, 

Girt with his mantle of tempestuous flame, 


202 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Glares in mid-heaven ; but to his noontide blaze 
The slender violet lifts its lidless eye, 

And from his splendor steals its fairest hue, 

Its sweetest perfume from his scorching fire. 

I may just as well stop here as anywhere, for there 
is more of the manuscript to come, and I can only 
give it in instalments. 

The Young Astronomer had told me I might read 
any portions of his manuscript I saw fit to certain 
friends. I tried this last extract on the old Master. 

It’s the same story we all have to tell, — said he, 
when I had done reading. —We are all asking ques¬ 
tions nowadays. I should like to hear him read some 
of his verses himself, and I think some of the other 
boarders would like to. I wonder if he wouldn’t do 
it, if we asked him! Poets read their own composi¬ 
tions in a singsong sort of way; but they do seem to 
love ’em so, that I always enjoy it. It makes me 
laugh a little inwardly to see how they dandle their 
poetical babies, but I don’t let them know it. We 
must get up a select party of the boarders to hear him 
read. We ’ll send him a regular invitation. I will 
put my name at the head of it, and you shall write it. 

— That was neatly done. How I hate writing such 
things ! But I suppose I must do it. 

VIII. 

The Master and I had been thinking for some time 
of trying to get the Young Astronomer round to our 
side of the table. There are many subjects on which 
both of us like to talk with him, and it would be con¬ 
venient to have him nearer to us. How to manage it 
was not quite so clear as it might have been. The 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 203 

Scarabee wanted to sit with his back to the light, as 
it was in his present position. He used his eyes so 
much in studying minute objects, that he wished to 
spare them all fatigue, and did not like facing a win¬ 
dow. Neither of us cared to ask the Man of Letters, 
so called, to change his place, and of course we could 
not think of making such a request of the Young Girl 
or the Lady. So we were at a stand with reference 
to this project of ours. 

But while we were proposing, Fate or Providence 
disposed everything for us. The Man of Letters, 
so called, was missing one morning, having folded 
his tent — that is, packed his carpet-bag — with the 
silence of the Arabs, and encamped — that is, taken 
lodgings — in some locality which he had forgotten to 
indicate. 

The Landlady bore this sudden bereavement re¬ 
markably well. Her remarks and reflections, though 
borrowing the aid of homely imagery and doing occa¬ 
sional violence to the nicer usages of speech, were not 
without philosophical discrimination. 

— I like a gentleman that is a gentleman. But 
there ’s a difference in what folks call gentlemen as 
there is in what you put on table. There is cabbages 
and there is cauliflowers. There is clams and there 
is oysters. There is mackerel and there is salmon. 
And there is some that knows the difference and 
some that doos n’t. I had a little account with that 
boarder that he forgot to settle before he went off, so 
all of a suddin. I sha’n’t say anything about it. 
I ’ve seen the time when I should have felt bad about 
losing what he owed me, but it was no great matter; 
and if he ’ll only stay away now he’s gone, I can 
stand losing it, and not cry my eyes out nor lay awake 


204 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


all night neither. I never had ought to have took 
him. Where he come from and where he ’s gone to 
is unbeknown to me. If he ’d only smoked good to¬ 
bacco, I wouldn’t have said a word; but it was such 
dreadful stuff, it ’ll take a week to get his chamber 
sweet enough to show them that asks for rooms. It 
doos smell like all possest. 

— Left any goods? — asked the Salesman. 

— Or dockermunts? — added the Member of the 
Haouse. 

The Landlady answered with a faded smile, which 
implied that there was no hope in that direction. Dr. 
Benjamin, with a sudden recurrence of youthful feel¬ 
ing, made a fan with the fingers of his right hand, the 
second phalanx of the thumb resting on the tip of the 
nose, and the remaining digits diverging from each 
other, in the plane of the median line of the face, — I 
suppose this is the way he would have described the 
gesture, which is almost a specialty of the Parisian 
gamin . That Boy immediately copied it, and added 
greatly to its effect by extending the fingers of the 
other hand in a line with those of the first, and vigo¬ 
rously agitating those of the two hands, — a gesture 
which acts like a puncture on the distended self¬ 
esteem of one to whom it is addressed, and cheapens 
the memory of the absent to a very low figure. 

I wish the reader to observe that I treasure up with 
interest all the words uttered by the Salesman. It 
must have been noticed that he very rarely speaks. 
Perhaps he has an inner life, with its own deep emo¬ 
tional, and lofty contemplative elements, but as we 
see him, he is the boarder reduced to the simplest 
expression of that term. Yet, like most human crea¬ 
tures, he has generic and specific characters not un- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 205 

worthy of being studied. I notice particularly a 
certain electrical briskness of movement, such as one 
may see in a squirrel, which clearly belongs to his 
calling. The dry-goodsman’s life behind his counter 
is a succession of sudden, snappy perceptions and 
brief series of coordinate spasms, as thus: — 

“Purple calico, three quarters wide, six yards.” 

Up goes the arm; bang! tumbles out the flat roll 
and turns half a dozen somersets, as if for the fun of 
the thing; the six yards of calico hurry over the mea¬ 
suring nails, hunching their backs up, like six canker- 
worms; out jump the scissors; snip, clip, rip; the 
stuff is wisped up, brown - papered, tied, labelled, 
delivered, and the man is himself again, like a child 
just come out of a convulsion-fit. Think of a man’s 
having some hundreds of these semi-epileptic seizures 
every day, and you need not wonder that he does not 
say much; these fits take the talk all out of him. 

But because he, or any other man, does not say 
much, it does not follow that he may not have, as I 
have said, an exalted and intense inner life. I have 
known a number of cases where a man who seemed 
thoroughly commonplace and unemotional has all at 
once surprised everybody by telling the story of his 
hidden life far more pointedly and dramatically than 
any playwright or novelist or poet could have told it 
for him. I will not insult your intelligence, Beloved, 
by saying how he has told it. 

— We had been talking over the subjects touched 
upon in the Lady’s letter. 

— I suppose one man in a dozen — said the Master 
— ought to be born a skeptic. That was the propor¬ 
tion among the Apostles, at any rate. 

— So there was one Judas among them,—I re¬ 
marked. 


206 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— Well, — said the Master, — they ’ve been white¬ 
washing Judas of late. But never mind him. I did 
not say there was not one rogue on the average among 
a dozen men. I don’t see how that would interfere 
with my proposition. If I say that among a dozen 
men you ought to find one that weighs over a hundred 
and fifty pounds, and you tell me that there were 
twelve men in your club, and one of ’em had red hair, 
I don’t see that you have materially damaged my 
statement. 

— I thought it best to let the old Master have his 
easy victory, which was more apparent than real, 
very evidently, and he went on. 

— When the Lord sends out a batch of human 
beings, say a hundred— Did you ever read my 
book, the new edition of it, I mean? 

It is rather awkward to answer such a question in 
the negative, but I said, with the best grace I could, 
“No, not the last edition .” 

— Well, I must give you a copy of it. My book 
and I are pretty much the same thing. Sometimes I 
steal from my book in my talk without mentioning it, 
and then I say to myself, “Oh, that won’t do; every¬ 
body has read my book and knows it by heart.” And 
then the other I says, — you know there are two of us, 
right and left, like a pair of shoes, — the other I says, 
“You ’re a — something or other — fool. They have 
n’t read your confounded old book; besides, if they 
have, they have forgotten all about it.” Another 
time, I say, thinking I will be very honest, “I have 
said something about that in my book”; and then 
the other I says, “What a Balaam’s quadruped you 
are to tell ’em it’s in your book; they don’t care 
whether it is or not, if it’s anything worth saying; 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 207 

and if it isn’t worth saying, what are you braying 
for? ” That is a rather sensible fellow, that other 
chap we talk with, but an impudent whelp. I never 
got such abuse from any blackguard in my life as I 
have from that No. 2 of me, the one that answers the 
other’s questions and makes the comments, and does 
what in demotic phrase is called the “sarsing.” 

— I laughed at that. I have just such a fellow 
always with me, as wise as Solomon, if I would only 
heed him; but as insolent as Shimei, cursing, and 
throwing stones and dirt, and behaving as if he had 
the traditions of the “ape-like human being” born 
with him rather than civilized instincts. One does 
not have to be a king to know what it is to keep a 
king’s jester. 

— I mentioned my book, — the Master said, — 
because I have something in it on the subject we were 
talking about. I should like to read you a passage 
here and there out of it, where I have expressed my¬ 
self a little more freely on some of those matters we 
handle in conversation. If you don’t quarrel with it, 
I must give you a copy of the book. It’s a rather 
serious thing to get a copy of a book from the writer 
of it. It has made my adjectives sweat pretty hard, I 
know, to put together an answer returning thanks and 
not lying beyond the twilight of veracity, if one may 
use a figure. Let me try a little of my book on you, 
in divided doses, as my friends the doctors say. 

— Fiat experirnentum in corpore vili , — I said, 
laughing at my own expense. I don’t doubt the 
medicament is quite as good as the patient deserves, 
and probably a great deal better, — I added, reinfor¬ 
cing my feeble compliment. 

[When you pay a compliment to an author, don’t 


208 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

qualify it in the next sentence so as to take all the 
goodness out of it. Now I am thinking of it, I will 
give you one or two pieces of advice. Be careful to 
assure yourself that the person you are talking with 
wrote the article or book you praise. It is not very 
pleasant to be told, “Well, there, now! I always 
liked your writings, but you never did anything half 
so good as this last piece,” and then to have to tell the 
blunderer that this last piece is n’t yours, but t’ other 
man’s. Take care that the phrase or sentence you 
commend is not one that is in quotation-marks. “ The 
best thing in your piece, I think, is a line I do not 
remember meeting before; it struck me as very true 
and well expressed: — 

‘ An honest man’s the noblest work of God.’ ” 

“But, my dear lady, that line is one which is to be 
found in a writer of the last century, and not original 
with me.” One ought not to have undeceived her, 
perhaps, but one is naturally honest, and cannot bear 
to be credited with what is not his own. The lady 
blushes, of course, and says she has not read much 
ancient literature, or some such thing. The pearl 
upon the Ethiop’s arm is very pretty in verse, but 
one does not care to furnish the dark background for 
other persons’ jewelry.] 

I adjourned from the table in company with the old 
Master to his apartments. He was evidently in easy 
circumstances, for he had the best accommodations 
the house afforded. We passed through a reception- 
room to his library, where everything showed that he 
had ample means for indulging the modest tastes of a 
scholar. 

— The first thing, naturally, when one enters a 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 209 


scholar’s study or library, is to look at his hooks. 
One gets a notion very speedily of his tastes and the 
range of his pursuits by a glance round his book¬ 
shelves. 

Of course, you know there are many fine houses 
where the library is a part of the upholstery, so to 
speak. Books in handsome binding kept locked under 
plate-glass in showy dwarf bookcases are as important 
to stylish establishments as servants in livery, who 
sit with folded arms, are to stylish equipages. I sup¬ 
pose those wonderful statues with the folded arms do 
sometimes change their attitude, and I suppose those 
books with the gilded backs do sometimes get opened, 
but it is nobody’s business whether they do or not, 
and it is not best to ask too many questions. 

This sort of thing is common enough, but there is 
another case that may prove deceptive if you under¬ 
take to judge from appearances. Once in a while 
you will come on a house where you will find a family 
of readers and almost no library. Some of the most 
indefatigable devourers of literature have very few 
books. They belong to book clubs, they haunt the 
public libraries, they borrow of friends, and somehow 
or other get hold of everything they want, scoop out 
all it holds for them, and have done with it. When 
I want a book, it is as a tiger wants a sheep. I must 
have it with one spring, and, if I miss it, go away de¬ 
feated and hungry. And my experience with public 
libraries is that the first volume of the book I inquire 
for is out, unless I happen to want the second, when 
that is out. 

— I was pretty well prepared to understand the 
Master’s library and his account of it. We seated 
ourselves in two very comfortable chairs, and I began 
the conversation. 


210 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


— I see you have a large and rather miscellaneous 
collection of hooks. Did you get them together by 
accident or according to some preconceived plan? 

— Both, sir, both, — 1 the Master answered. — 
When Providence throws a good book in my way, I 
bow to its decree and purchase it as an act of piety, 
if it is reasonably or unreasonably cheap. I adopt 
a certain number of books every year, out of a love 
for the foundlings and stray children of other people’s 
brains that nobody seems to care for. Look here. 

He took down a Greek Lexicon finely bound in 
calf, and spread it open. 

Do you see that Hedericus? I had Greek diction¬ 
aries enough and to spare, but I saw that noble quarto 
lying in the midst of an ignoble crowd of cheap books, 
and marked with a price which I felt to be an insult 
to scholarship, to the memory of Homer, sir, and the 
awful shade of Aeschylus. I paid the mean price 
asked for it, and I wanted to double it, but I suppose 
it would have been a foolish sacrifice of coin to senti¬ 
ment. I love that book for its looks and behavior. 
None of your u half-calf ” economies in that volume, 
sir! And see how it lies open anywhere! There 
is n’t a book in my library that has such a generous 
way of laying its treasures before you. From Alpha 
to Omega, calm, assured rest at any page that your 
choice or accident may light on. No lifting of a re¬ 
bellious leaf like an upstart servant that does not know 
his place and can never be taught manners, but tran¬ 
quil, well-bred repose. A book may be a perfect 
gentleman in its aspect and demeanor, and this book 
would be good company for personages like Roger 
Ascham and his pupils the Lady Elizabeth and the 
Lady Jane Grey. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 211 


The Master was evidently riding a hobby, and 
what I wanted to know was the plan on which he had 
formed his library. So I brought him back to the 
point by asking him the question in so many words. 

Yes,—he said,—I have a kind of notion of the 
way in which a library ought to be put together — no, 
I don’t mean that, I mean ought to grow. I don’t 
pretend to say that mine is a model, but it serves my 
turn well enough, and it represents me pretty accu¬ 
rately. A scholar must shape his own shell, secrete it 
one might almost say, for secretion is only separation, 
you know, of certain elements derived from the mate¬ 
rials of the world about us. And a scholar’s study, 
with the books lining its walls, is his shell. It is n’t 
a mollusk’s shell, either; it’s a caddice-worm’s shell. 
You know about the caddice-worm? 

— More or less; less rather than more, — was my 
humble reply. 

Well, sir, the caddice-worm is the larva of a fly, 
and he makes a case for himself out of all sorts of bits 
of everything that happen to suit his particular fancy, 
dead or alive, sticks and stones and small shells with 
their owners in ’em, living as comfortable as ever. 
Every one of these caddice-worms has his special fancy 
as to what he will pick up and glue together, with a 
kind of natural cement he provides himself, to make 
his case out of. In it he lives, sticking his head and 
shoulders out once in a while, that is all. Don’t you 
see that a student in his library is a caddice-worm in 
his case? I ’ve told you that I take an interest in 
pretty much everything, and don’t mean to fence out 
any human interests from the private grounds of my 
intelligence. Then, again, there is a subject, per¬ 
haps I may say there is more than one, that I want to 


212 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


exhaust, to know to the very bottom. And besides, 
of course I must have my literary harem , my pare 
aux cerfs , where my favorites await my moments of 
leisure and pleasure, — my scarce and precious edi¬ 
tions, my luxurious typographical masterpieces; my 
Delilahs, that take my head in their lap: the pleasant 
story-tellers and the like; the books I love because they 
are fair to look upon, prized by collectors, endeared 
by old associations, secret treasures that nobody else 
knows anything about; books, in short, that I like 
for insufficient reasons it may be, but peremptorily, 
and mean to like and to love and to cherish till death 
us do part. 

Don’t you see I have given you a key to the way 
my library is made up, so that you can apriorize the 
plan according to which I have filled my bookcases ? 
I will tell you how it is carried out. 

In the first place, you see, I have four extensive 
cyclopaedias. Out of these I can get information 
enough to serve my immediate purpose on almost 
any subject. These, of course, are supplemented by 
geographical, biographical, bibliographical, and other 
dictionaries, including of course lexicons to all the lan¬ 
guages I ever meddle with. Next to these come the 
works relating to my one or two specialties, and these 
collections I make as perfect as I can. Every library 
should try to be complete on something, if it were 
only on the history of pin-heads. I don’t mean that 
I buy all the trashy compilations on my special sub¬ 
jects, but I try to have all the works of any real im¬ 
portance relating to them, old as well as new. In the 
following compartment you will find the great authors 
in all the languages I have mastered, from Homer and 
Hesiod downward to the last great English name. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 213 

This division, you see, you can make almost as exten¬ 
sive or as limited as you choose. You can crowd the 
great representative writers into a small compass; or 
you can make a library consisting only of the different 
editions of Horace, if you have space and money 
enough. Then comes the Harem , the shelf or the 
bookcase of Delilahs, that you have paid wicked prices 
for, that you love without pretending to be reasona¬ 
ble about it, and would bag in case of fire before all 
the rest, just as Mr. Townley took the Clytie to his 
carriage when the anti-Catholic mob threatened his 
house in 1780. As for the foundlings like my He- 
dericus, they go among their peers; it is a pleasure 
to take them from the dusty stall where they were 
elbowed by plebeian school-books and battered odd 
volumes, and give them Alduses and Elzevirs for 
companions. 

Nothing remains but the Infirmary. The most 
painful subjects are the unfortunates that have lost 
a cover. Bound a hundred years ago, perhaps, and 
one of the rich old browned covers gone — what a 
pity! Do you know what to do about it ? I ’ll tell 
you, — no, I ’ll show you. Look at this volume. 
M. T. Ciceronis Opera, — a dozen of ’em, — one of 
’em minus half his cover, a poor one-legged cripple, 
six months ago, — now see him. 

— He looked very respectably indeed, both covers 
dark, ancient, very decently matched; one would 
hardly notice the fact that they were not twins. 

— I ’ll tell you what I did. You poor devil, said 
I, you are a disgrace to your family. We must send 
you to a surgeon and have some kind of a Taliacotian 
operation performed on you. (You remember the 
operation as described in Hudibras, of course.) The 


214 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

first thing was to find a subject of similar age and 
aspect ready to part with one of his members. So I 
went to Quidlibet’s,—you know Quidlibet and that 
hieroglyphic sign of his with the omniscient-looking 
eye as its most prominent feature, — and laid my case 
before him. I want you, said I, to look up an old 
book of mighty little value, — one of your ten-cent 
vagabonds would be the sort of thing, — but an otd 
beggar, with a cover like this, and lay it by for me. 

And Quidlibet, who is a pleasant body to deal with, 
— only he has insulted one or two gentlemanly books 
by selling them to me at very low-bred and shamefully 
insufficient prices, — Quidlibet, I say, laid by three 
old books for me to help myself from, and didn’t take 
the trouble even to make me pay the thirty cents for 
’em. Well, said I to myself, let us look at our three 
books that have undergone the last insult short of the 
trunk-maker’s or the paper-mills, and see what they 
are. There may be something worth looking at in 
one or the other of ’em. 

Now do you know it was with a kind of a tremor 
that I untied the package and looked at these three 
unfortunates, too humble for the companionable dime 
to recognize as its equal in value. The same sort of 
feeling you know if you ever tried the Bible-and-key, 
or the Sortes Virgiliance . I think you will like to 
know what the three books were which had been be¬ 
stowed upon me gratis , that I might tear away one 
of the covers of the one that best matched my Cicero, 
and give it to the binder to cobble my crippled volume 
with. 

The Master took the three books from a cupboard 
and continued. 

No. I. An odd volume of The Adventurer. It 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 215 

lias many interesting things enough, but is made pre¬ 
cious by containing Simon Browne’s famous Dedica¬ 
tion to the Queen of his Answer to Tindal’s “Chris¬ 
tianity as old as the Creation.” Simon Browne was 
the Man without a Soul. An excellent person, a 
most worthy dissenting minister, but lying under a 
strange delusion. 

Here is a paragraph from his Dedication: — 

“He was once a man; and of some little name; 
but of no worth, as his present unparalleled case 
makes but too manifest; for by the immediate hand 
of an avenging GOD, his very thinking substance 
has, for more than seven years, been continually wast¬ 
ing away, till it is wholly perished out of him, if it 
be not utterly come to nothing. None, no, not the 
least remembrance of its very ruins, remains, not the 
shadow of an idea is left, nor any sense that so much 
as one single one, perfect or imperfect, whole or di¬ 
minished, ever did appear to a mind within him, or 
was perceived by it.” 

Think of this as the Dedication of a book “univer¬ 
sally allowed to be the best which that controversy 
produced,” and what a flood of light it pours on the 
insanities of those self-analyzing diarists whose mor¬ 
bid reveries have been so often mistaken for piety! 
No. I. had something for me, then, besides the cover, 
which was all it claimed to have worth offering. 

No. II. was “A View of Society and Manners in 
Italy.” Yol. III. By John Moore, M. D. (Zeluco 
Moore.) You know his pleasant book. In this par¬ 
ticular volume what interested me most, perhaps, was 
the very spirited and intelligent account of the miracle 
of the liquefaction of the blood of Saint Januarius, 
but it gave me an hour’s mighty agreeable reading. 
So much for Number Two. 


216 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

No. III. was “An Essay on the Great EFFECTS 
of Even Languid and Unheeded Local Motion.” 
By the Hon. Robert Boyle. Published in 1685, and, 
as appears from other sources, “received with great 
and general applause.” I confess I was a little star¬ 
tled to find how near this earlier philosopher had come 
to the modern doctrines, such as are illustrated in 
Tyndall’s “Heat considered as a Mode of Motion.” 
He speaks of “Us, who endeavor to resolve the Phe¬ 
nomena of Nature into Matter and Local motion.” 
That sounds like the nineteenth century, but what 
shall we say to this? “As when a bar of iron or sil¬ 
ver, having been well hammered, is newly taken off 
of the anvil; though the eye can discern no motion in 
it, yet the touch will readily perceive it to be very hot, 
and if you spit upon it, the brisk agitation of the in¬ 
sensible parts will become visible in that which they 
will produce in the liquor.” He takes a bar of tin, 
and tries whether by bending it to and fro two or 
three times he cannot “procure a considerable internal 
commotion among the parts”; and having by this 
means broken or cracked it in the middle, finds, as he 
expected, that the middle parts had considerably 
heated each other. There are many other curious and 
interesting observations in the volume which I should 
like to tell you of, but these will serve my purpose. 

— Which book furnished you the old cover you 
wanted ? — said I. 

— Did he hill the owl f — said the Master, laugh¬ 
ing. [I suppose you, the reader, know the owl story.] 
— It was Number Two that lent me one of his covers. 
Poor wretch! He was one of three, and had lost his 
two brothers. From him that hath not shall be taken 
even that which he hath. The Scripture had to be 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 217 


fulfilled in his case. But I could n’t help saying to 
myself, What do you keep writing books for, when 
the stalls are covered all over with ’em, good books, 
too, that nobody will give ten cents apiece for, lying 
there like so many dead beasts of burden, of no 
account except to strip off their hides? What is the 
use, I say? I have made a book or two in my time, 
and I am making another that perhaps will see the 
light one of these days. But if I had my life to live 
over again, I think I should go in for silence, and 
get as near to Nirvana as I could. This language 
is such a paltry tool! The handle of it cuts and the 
blade does n’t. You muddle yourself by not know¬ 
ing what you mean by a word, and send out your un¬ 
answered riddles and rebuses to clear up other peo¬ 
ple’s difficulties. It always seems to me that talk is 
a ripple and thought is a ground swell. A string of 
words, that mean pretty much anything, helps you in 
a certain sense to get hold of a thought, just as a 
string of syllables that mean nothing helps you to a 
word; but it’s a poor business, it’s a poor business, 
and the more you study definition the more you find 
out how poor it is. Do you know I sometimes think 
our little entomological neighbor is doing a sounder 
business than we people that make books about our¬ 
selves and our slippery abstractions? A man can see 
the spots on a bug and count ’em, and tell what their 
color is, and put another bug alongside of him and 
see whether the two are alike or different. And when 
he uses a word he knows just what he means. There 
is no mistake as to the meaning and identity of pulex 
irritans , confound him! 

— What if we should look in, some day, on the 
Scarabeeist, as he calls himself ? — said I. — The fact 


218 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

is the Master had got agoing at such a rate that 1 
was willing to give a little turn to the conversation. 

— Oh, very well, —said the Master, —I had some 
more things to say, hut I don’t doubt they ’ll keep. 
And besides, I take an interest in entomology, and 
have my own opinion on the meloe question. 

— You don’t mean to say you have studied insects 
as well as solar systems and the order of things gen¬ 
erally? 

— He looked pleased. All philosophers look 
pleased when people say to them virtually, “Ye are 
gods.” The Master says he is vain constitutionally, 
and thanks God that he is. I don’t think he has 
enough vanity to make a fool of himself with it, but 
the simple truth is he cannot help knowing that he 
has a wide and lively intelligence, and it pleases him 
to know it, and to be reminded of it, especially in an 
oblique and tangential sort of way, so as not to look 
like downright flattery. 

Yes, yes, I have amused a summer or two with in¬ 
sects, among other things. I described a new tabanus, 
— horsefly, you know, — which, I think, had escaped 
notice. I felt as grand when I showed up my new 
discovery as if I had created the beast. I don’t doubt 
Herschel felt as if he had made a planet when he first 
showed the astronomers Georgium Sidus , as he called 
it. And that reminds me of something. I was rid¬ 
ing on the outside of a stage-coach from London to 
Windsor in the year — never mind the year, but it 
must have been in June, I suppose, for I bought some 
strawberries. England owes me a sixpence with in¬ 
terest from date, for I gave the woman a shilling, and 
the coach contrived to start or the woman timed it so 
that I just missed getting my change. What an odd 


THE POET AT TIIE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 219 

thing memory is, to be sure, to have kept such a tri¬ 
viality, and have lost so much that was invaluable! 
She is a crazy wench, that Mnemosyne; she throws 
her jewels out of the window and locks up straws and 
old rags in her strong box. 

[De profundis ! said I to myself, the bottom of the 
bushel has dropped out! /Sancta Maria , ora pro 
nobis /] 

— But as I was saying, I was riding on the outside 
of a stage-coach from London to Windsor, when all 
at once a picture familiar to me from my New Eng¬ 
land village childhood came upon me like a reminis¬ 
cence rather than a revelation. It was a mighty be¬ 
wilderment of slanted masts and spars and ladders and 
ropes, from the midst of which a vast tube, looking as 
if it might be a piece of ordnance such as the revolted 
angels battered the walls of Heaven with, according 
to Milton, lifted its muzzle defiantly towards the sky. 
Why, you blessed old rattletrap, said I to myself, I 
know you as well as I know my father’s spectacles and 
snuff-box! And that same crazy witch of a Memory, 
so divinely wise and foolish, travels thirty-five hun¬ 
dred miles or so in a single pulse-beat, makes straight 
for an old house and an old library and an old corner 
of it, and whisks out a volume of an old cyclopaedia, 
and there is the picture of which this is the original. 
Sir William Herschel’s great telescope! It was just 
about as big, as it stood there by the roadside, as it 
was in the picture, not much different any way. 
Why should it be? The pupil of your eye is only a 
gimlet-hole, not so very much bigger than the eye of 
a sail-needle, and a camel has to go through it before 
you can see him. You look into a stereoscope and 
think you see a miniature of a building or a mountain; 


220 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

you don’t, you ’re made a fool of by your lying intel¬ 
ligence , as you call it; you see the building and the 
mountain just as large as with your naked eye looking 
straight at the real objects. Doubt it, do you? Per¬ 
haps you ’d like to doubt it to the music of a couple 
of gold five-dollar pieces. If you would, say the 
word, and man and money, as Messrs. Heenan and 
Morrissey have it, shall be forthcoming; for I will 
make you look at a real landscape with your right eye, 
and a stereoscopic view of it with your left eye, both 
at once, and you can slide one over the other by a 
little management and see how exactly the picture 
overlies the true landscape. We won’t try it now, 
because I want to read you something out of my book. 

— I have noticed that the Master very rarely fails 
to come back to his original proposition, though he, 
like myself, is fond of zigzagging in order to reach it. 
Men’s minds are like the pieces on a chess-board in 
their way of moving. One mind creeps from the 
square it is on to the next, straight forward, like the 
pawns. Another sticks close to its own line of 
thought and follows it as far as it goes, with no heed 
for others’ opinions, as the bishop sweeps the board 
in the line of his own color. And another class of 
minds break through everything that lies before them, 
ride over argument and opposition, and go to the end 
of the board, like the castle. But there is still an¬ 
other sort of intellect which is very apt to jump over 
the thought that stands next and come down in the 
unexpected way of the knight. But that same knight, 
as the chess manuals will show you, will contrive to 
get on to every square of the board in a pretty series 
of moves that looks like a pattern of embroidery, and 
so these zigzagging minds like the Master’s, and I 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 221 


suppose my own is something like it, will sooner or 
later get back to the square next the one they started 
from. 

The Master took down a volume from one of the 
shelves. I could not help noticing that it was a shelf 
near his hand as he sat, and that the volume looked as 
if he had made frequent use of it. I saw, too, that 
he handled it in a loving sort of way; the tenderness 
he would have bestowed on a wife and children had 
to find a channel somewhere, and what more natural 
than that he should look fondly on the volume which 
held the thoughts that had rolled themselves smooth 
and round in his mind like pebbles on a beach, the 
dreams which, under cover of the simple artifices such 
as all writers use, told the little world of readers his 
secret hopes and aspirations, the fancies which had 
pleased him and which he could not bear to let die 
without trying to please others with them ? I have a 
great sympathy with authors, most of all with unsuc¬ 
cessful ones. If one had a dozen lives or so, it would 
all be very well, but to have only a single ticket in 
the great lottery, and have that drawn a blank, is a 
rather sad sort of thing. So I was pleased to see the 
affectionate kind of pride with which the Master 
handled his book; it was a success, in its way, and he 
looked on it with a cheerful sense that he had a right 
to be proud of it. The Master opened the volume, 
and, putting on his large round glasses, began read¬ 
ing, as authors love to read that love their books. 

— The only good reason for believing in the stabil¬ 
ity of the moral order of things is to be found in the 
tolerable steadiness of human averages. Out of a 
hundred human beings fifty-one will be found in the 


222 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

long run on the side of the right, so far as they know 
it, and against the wrong. They will be organizers 
rather than disorganizers, helpers and not hinderers 
in the upward movement of the race. This is the 
main fact we have to depend on. The right hand of 
the great organism is a little stronger than the left, 
that is all. 

Now and then we come across a left-handed man. 
So now and then we find a tribe or a generation, the 
subject of what we may call moral left-handedness, 
but that need not trouble us about our formula. All 
we have to do is to spread the average over a wider 
territory or a longer period of time. Any race or 
period that insists on being left-handed must go under 
if it comes in contact with a right-handed one. If 
there were, as a general rule, fifty-one rogues in the 
hundred instead of forty-nine, all other qualities of 
mind and body being equally distributed between the 
two sections, the order of things would sooner or later 
end in universal disorder. It is the question between 
the leak and the pumps. 

It does not seem very likely that the Creator of all 
things is taken by surprise at witnessing anything any 
of his creatures do or think. Men have sought out 
many inventions, but they can have contrived nothing 
which did not exist as an idea in the omniscient con¬ 
sciousness to which past, present, and future are alike 
Now. 

We read what travellers tell us about the King of 
Dahomey, or the Fejee Island people, or the short 
and simple annals of the celebrities recorded in the 
Newgate Calendar, and do not know just what to 
make of these brothers and sisters of the race; but 
I do not suppose an intelligence even as high as the 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 223 

angelic beings, to stop short there, would see anything 
very peculiar or wonderful about them, except as 
everything is wonderful and unlike everything else. 

It is very curious to see how science, that is, look¬ 
ing at and arranging the facts of a case with our own 
eyes and our own intelligence, without minding what 
somebody else has said, or how some old majority vote 
went in a pack of intriguing ecclesiastics, — I say it 
is very curious to see how science is catching up with 
one superstition after another. 

There is a recognized branch of science familiar to 
all those who know anything of the studies relating 
to life, under the name of Teratology. It deals with 
all sorts of monstrosities which are to be met with in 
living beings, and more especially in animals. It is 
found that what used to be called lusus naturae, or 
freaks of nature, are just as much subject to laws as 
the naturally developed forms of living creatures. 

The rustic looks at the Siamese twins, and thinks 
he is contemplating an unheard-of anomaly; but there 
are plenty of cases like theirs in the books of scholars, 
and though they are not quite so common as double 
cherries, the mechanism of their formation is not a 
whit more mysterious than that of the twinned fruits. 
Such cases do not disturb the average arrangement; 
we have Changs and Engs at one pole, and Cains and 
Abels at the other. One child is born with six fin¬ 
gers on each hand, and another falls short by one or 
more fingers of his due allowance; but the glover puts 
his faith in the great law of averages, and makes his 
gloves with five fingers apiece, trusting nature for 
their counterparts. 

Thinking people are not going to be scared out of 
explaining or at least trying to explain things by the 


224 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

shrieks of persons whose beliefs are disturbed thereby. 
Comets were portents to Increase Mather, President 
of Harvard College; “preachers of Divine wrath, 
heralds and messengers of evil tidings to the world.’ 1 
It is not so very long since Professor Winthrop was 
teaching at the same institution. I can remember 
two of his boys very well, old boys, it is true, they 
were, and one of them wore a three-cornered cocked 
hat; but the father of these boys, whom, as I say, 
I can remember, had to defend himself against the 
minister of the Old South Church for the impiety of 
trying to account for earthquakes on natural princi¬ 
ples. And his ancestor, Governor Winthrop, would 
probably have shaken his head over his descendant’s 
dangerous audacity, if one may judge by the solemn 
way in which he mentions poor Mrs. Hutchinson’s un¬ 
pleasant experience, which so grievously disappointed 
her maternal expectations. But people used always to 
be terribly frightened by those irregular vital products 
which we now call “interesting specimens” and care¬ 
fully preserve in jars of alcohol. It took next to 
nothing to make a panic; a child was born a few 
centuries ago with six teeth in its head, and about 
that time the Turks began gaining great advantages 
over the Christians. Of course there was an intimate 
connection between the prodigy and the calamity. 
So said the wise men of that day. 

— All these out-of-the-way cases are studied con¬ 
nectedly now, and are found to obey very exact rules. 
With a little management one can even manufacture 
living monstrosities. Malformed salmon and other 
fish can be supplied in quantity, if anybody happens 
to want them. 

Now, what all I have said is tending to is exactly 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 225 

this, namely, that just as the celestial movements are 
regulated by fixed laws, just as bodily monstrosities 
are produced according to rule, and with as good rea¬ 
son as normal shapes, so obliquities of character are 
to be accounted for on perfectly natural principles; 
they are just as capable of classification as the bodily 
ones, and they all diverge from a certain average or 
middle term which is the type of its kind. 

If life had been a little longer I would have written 
a number of essays for which, as it is, I cannot expect 
to have time. I have set down the titles of a hun¬ 
dred or more, and I have often been tempted to pub¬ 
lish these, for according to my idea, the title of a 
book very often renders the rest of it unnecessary. 
“Moral Teratology,” for instance, which is marked 
No. 67 on my list of “Essays Potential, not Actual,” 
suggests sufficiently well what I should be like to say 
in the pages it would preface. People hold up their 
hands at a moral monster as if there was no reason for 
his existence but his own choice. That was a fine 
specimen we read of in the papers a few years ago, — 
the Frenchman, it may be remembered, who used to 
waylay and murder young women, and after appro¬ 
priating their effects, bury their bodies in a private 
cemetery he kept for that purpose. It is very nat¬ 
ural, and I do not say it is not very proper, to hang 
such eccentric persons as this; but it is not clear 
whether his vagaries produce any more sensation at 
Headquarters than the meek enterprises of the mild¬ 
est of city missionaries. For the study of Moral 
Teratology will teach you that you do not get such a 
malformed character as that without a long chain of 
causes to account for it; and if you only knew those 
causes, you would know perfectly well what to expect. 


226 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

You may feel pretty sure that our friend of the pri¬ 
vate cemetery was not the child of pious and intelli¬ 
gent parents; that he was not nurtured by the best of 
mothers, and educated by the most judicious teach¬ 
ers ; and that he did not come of a lineage long known 
and honored for its intellectual and moral qualities. 
Suppose that one should go to the worst quarter of 
the city and pick out the worst-looking child of the 
worst couple he could find, and then train him up suc¬ 
cessively at the School for Infant Rogues, the Acad¬ 
emy for Young Scamps, and the College for Complete 
Criminal Education, would it be reasonable to expect 
a Francois Xavier or a Henry Martyn to be the result 
of such a training? The traditionists, in whose pre¬ 
sumptuous hands the science of anthropology has 
been trusted from time immemorial, have insisted on 
eliminating cause and effect from the domain of mor¬ 
als. When they have come across a moral monster 
they have seemed to think that he put himself to¬ 
gether, having a free choice of all the constituents 
which make up manhood, and that consequently no 
punishment could be too bad for him. 

I say, hang him and welcome, if that is the best 
thing for society; hate him, in a certain sense, as you 
hate a rattlesnake, but, if you pretend to be a philo¬ 
sopher, recognize the fact that what you hate in him is 
chiefly misfortune, and that if you had been born with 
his villanous low forehead and poisoned instincts, and 
bred among creatures of the Races Maudites whose 
natural history has to be studied like that of beasts 
of prey and vermin, you would not have been sitting 
there in your gold-bowed spectacles and passing judg¬ 
ment on the peccadilloes of your fellow-creatures. 

I have seen men and women so disinterested and 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 227 

noble, and devoted to the best works, that it appeared 
to me if any good and faithful servant was entitled to 
enter into the joys of his Lord, such as these might 
be. But I do not know that I ever met with a human 
being who seemed to me to have a stronger claim on 
the pitying consideration and kindness of his Maker 
than a wretched, puny, crippled, stunted child that I 
saw in Newgate, who was pointed out as one of the 
most notorious and inveterate little thieves in London. 
I have no doubt that some of those who were looking 
at this pitiable morbid secretion of the diseased social 
organism thought they were very virtuous for hating 
him so heartily. 

It is natural, and in one sense is all right enough. 
I want to catch a thief and put the extinguisher on an 
incendiary as much as my neighbors do; but I have 
two sides to my consciousness as I have two sides to 
my heart, one carrying dark, impure blood, and the 
other the bright stream which has been purified and 
vivified by the great source of life and death, — the 
oxygen of the air which gives all things their vital 
heat, and burns all things at last to ashes. 

One side of me loves and hates; the other side of 
me judges, say rather pleads and suspends judgment. 
I think, if I were left to myself, I should hang a rogue 
and then write his apology and subscribe to a neat 
monument, commemorating, not his virtues, but his 
misfortunes. I should, perhaps, adorn the marble 
with emblems, as is the custom with regard to the more 
regular and normally constituted members of society. 
It would not be proper to put the image of a lamb 
upon the stone which marked the resting-place of him 
of the private cemetery. But I would not hesitate to 
place the effigy of a wolf or a hyena upon the monu- 


228 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ment. I do not judge these animals, I only kill them 
or shut them up. I presume they stand just as well 
with their Maker as lambs and kids, and the ex¬ 
istence of such beings is a perpetual plea for God 
Almighty’s poor, yelling, scalping Indians, his wea- 
sand-stopping Thugs, his despised felons, his murder¬ 
ing miscreants, and all the unfortunates whom we, 
picked individuals of a picked class of a picked race, 
scrubbed, combed, and catechized from our cradles 
upward, undertake to find accommodations for in an¬ 
other state of being where it is to be hoped they will 
have a better chance than they had in this. 

The Master paused, and took off his great round 
spectacles. I could not help thinking that he looked 
benevolent enough to pardon Judas Iscariot just at 
that moment, though his features can knot themselves 
up pretty formidably on occasion. 

— You are somewhat of a phrenologist, I judge, by 
the way you talk of instinctive and inherited tenden¬ 
cies— I said. 

— They tell me I ought to be, — he answered, par¬ 
rying my question, as I thought. — I have had a 
famous chart made out of my cerebral organs, accord¬ 
ing to which I ought to have been — something more 
than a poor Magister Artium. 

— I thought a shade of regret deepened the lines 
on his broad, antique-looking forehead, and I began 
talking about all the sights I had seen in the way of 
monstrosities, of which I had a considerable list, as 
you will see when I tell you my weakness in that di¬ 
rection. This, you understand, Beloved, is private 
and confidential. 

I pay my quarter of a dollar and go into all the 


THE POET AT THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 229 

side-shows that follow the caravans and circuses round 
the country. I have made friends of all the giants 
and all the dwarfs. I became acquainted with Mon¬ 
sieur Bihin, le plus bel homme du monde , and one of 
the biggest, a great many years ago, and have kept 
up my agreeable relations with him ever since. He 
is a most interesting giant, with a softness of voice 
and tenderness of feeling which I find very engaging. 
I was on friendly terms with Mr. Charles Freeman, a 
very superior giant of American birth, seven feet four, 
I think, in height, “double-jointed,” of mylodon mus¬ 
cularity, the same who in a British prize-ring tossed 
the Tipton Slasher from one side of the rope to the 
other, and now lies stretched, poor fellow! in a mighty 
grave in the same soil which holds the sacred ashes of 
Cribb, and the honored dust of Burke, — not the one 
“commonly called the sublime,” but that other Burke 
to whom Nature had denied the sense of hearing lest 
he should be spoiled by listening to the praises of the 
admiring circles which looked on his dear-bought tri¬ 
umphs. Nor have I despised those little ones whom 
that devout worshipper of Nature in her exceptional 
forms, the distinguished Barnum, has introduced to 
the notice of mankind. The General touches his 
chapeau to me, and the Commodore gives me a sailor’s 
greeting. I have had confidential interviews with the 
double-headed daughter of Africa, — so far, at least, 
as her twofold personality admitted of private confi¬ 
dences. I have listened to the touching experiences 
of the Bearded Lady, whose rough cheeks belie her 
susceptible heart. Miss Jane Campbell has allowed 
me to question her on the delicate subject of avoirdu¬ 
pois equivalents; and the armless fair one, whose em¬ 
brace no monarch could hope to win, has wrought me 


230 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

a watch-paper with those despised digits which have 
been degraded from gloves to boots in our evolution 
from the condition of quadrumana. 

I hope you have read my experiences as good-na¬ 
turedly as the old Master listened to them. He 
seemed to be pleased with my whim, and promised to 
go with me to see all the side-shows of the next cara¬ 
van. Before I left him he wrote my name in a copy 
of the new edition of his book, telling me that it would 
not all be new to me by a great deal, for he often 
talked what he had printed to make up for having 
printed a good deal of what he had talked. 

Here is the passage of his Poem the Young Astron¬ 
omer read to us. 


WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS. 


IV. 

From my lone turret as I look around 
O’er the green meadows to the ring of blue, 

From slope, from summit, and from half-hid vale 
The sky is stabbed with dagger-pointed spires, 
Their gilded symbols whirling in the wind, 

Their brazen tongues proclaiming to the world, 

“ Here truth is sold, the only genuine ware ; 

See that it has our trade-mark ! You will buy 
Poison instead of food across the way, 

The lies of ”-this or that, each several name 

The standard’s blazon and the battle-cry 
Of some true-gospel faction, and again 
The token of the Beast to all beside. 

And grouped round each I see a huddling crowd 
Alike in all things save the words they use ; 

In love, in longing, hate and fear the same. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 231 


Whom do we trust and serve ? We speak of one 
And bow to many ; Athens still would find 
The shrines of all she worshipped safe within 
Our tall barbarian temples, and the thrones 
That crowned Olympus mighty as of old. 

The god of music rules the Sabbath choir; 

The lyric muse must leave the sacred nine 
To help us please the dilettante’s ear ; 

Plutus limps homeward with us, as we leave 
The portals of the temple where we knelt 
And listened while the god of eloquence 
(Hermes of ancient days, but now disguised 
In sable vestments) with that other god 
Somnus, the son of Erebus and Nox, 

Fights in unequal contest for our souls ; 

The dreadful sovereign of the under world 
Still shakes his sceptre at us, and we hear 
The baying of the triple-throated hound ; 

Eros is young as ever, and as fair 
The lovely Goddess born of ocean’s foam. 

These be thy gods, O Israel! Who is he, 

The one ye name and tell us that ye serve, 

Whom ye would call me from my lonely tower 
To worship with the many-headed throng ? 

Is it the God that walked in Eden’s grove 
In the cool hour to seek our guilty sire ? 

The God who dealt with Abraham as the sons 
Of that old patriarch deal with other men ? 

The jealous God of Moses, one who feels 

An image as an insult, and is wroth 

With him who made it and his child unborn ? 

The God who plagued his people for the sin 
Of their adulterous king, beloved of him,— 

The same who offers to a chosen few 

The right to praise him in eternal song 

While a vast shrieking world of endless woe 

Blends its dread chorus with their rapturous hymn ? 

Is this the God ye mean, or is it he 

Who heeds the sparrow’s fall, whose loving heart 

Is as the pitying father’s to his child, 


232 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


Whose lesson to his children is, “ Forgive,” 

Whose plea for all, “ They know not what they do ’ ’ ? 

I claim the right of knowing whom I serve. 

Else is my service idle; He that asks 
My homage asks it from a reasoning soul. 

To crawl is not to worship; we have learned 
A drill of eyelids, bended neck and knee, 

Hanging our prayers on hinges, till we ape 
The flexures of the many-joiuted worm. 

Asia has taught her Allahs and salaams 

To the world’s children, — we have grown to men ! 

We who have rolled the sphere beneath our feet 

To find a virgin forest, as we lay 

The beams of our rude temple, first of all 

Must frame its doorway high enough for man 

To pass unstooping ; knowing as we do 

That He who shaped us last of living forms 

Has long enough been served by creeping things, 

Reptiles that left their foot-prints in the sand 

Of old sea-margins that have turned to stone, 

And men who learned their ritual; we demand 
To know him first, then trust him and then love 
When we have found him worthy of our love, 

Tried by our own poor hearts and not before; 

He must be truer than the truest friend, 

He must be tenderer than a woman’s love, 

A father better than the best of sires ; 

Kinder than she who bore us, though we sin 
Oftener than did the brother we are told, 

We —poor ill-tempered mortals —must forgive, 
Though seven times sinning threescore times and ten. 

This is the new world’s gospel: Be ye men ! 

Try well the legends of the children’s time; 

Ye are the chosen people, God has led 
Your steps across the desert of the deep 
As now across the desert of the shore ; 

Mountains are cleft before you as the sea 
Before the wandering tribe of Israel’s sons ; 

Still onward rolls the thunderous caravan, 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 233 


Its coming printed on the western sky, 

A cloud by day, by night a pillared flame; 

Your prophets are a hundred unto one 

Of them of old who cried, “ Thus saith the Lord ” ; 

They told of cities that should fall in heaps, 

But yours of mightier cities that shall rise 
Where yet the lonely fishers spread their nets, 

Where hides the fox and hoots the midnight owl; 

The tree of knowledge in your garden grows 
Not single, but at every humble door ; 

Its branches lend you their immortal food, 

That fills you with the sense of what ye are, 

No servants of an altar hewed and carved 
From senseless stone by craft of human hands, 

Rabbi, or dervish, brahmin, bishop, bonze, 

But masters of the charm with which they work 
To keep your hands from that forbidden tree 1 

Ye that have tasted that divinest fruit, 

Look on this world of yours with opened eyes ! 

Ye are as gods ! Nay, makers of your gods,— 

Each day ye break an image in your shrine 
And plant a fairer image where it stood : 

Where is the Moloch of your fathers’ creed, 

Whose fires of torment burned for span-long babes ? 

Fit object for a tender mother’s love ! 

Why not ? It was a bargain duly made 
For these same infants through the surety’s act 
Intrusted with their all for earth and heaven, 

By Him who chose their guardian, knowing well 
His fitness for the task, — this, even this, 

Was the true doctrine only yesterday 
As thoughts are reckoned, —and to-day you hear 
In words that sound as if from human tongues 
Those monstrous, uncouth horrors of the past 
That blot the blue of heaven and shame the earth 
As would the saurians of the age of slime, 

Awaking from their stony sepulchres 
And wallowing hateful in the eye of day ! 

Four of us listened to these lines as the young man 


234 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


read them, — the Master and myself and our two 
ladies. This was the little party we got up to hear 
him read. I do not think much of it was very new 
to the Master or myself. At any rate, he said to me 
when we were alone, — 

That is the kind of talk the “natural man,” as the 
theologians call him, is apt to fall into. 

— I thought it was the Apostle Paul, and not the 
theologians, that used the term “natural man,” — I 
ventured to suggest. 

— I should like to know where the Apostle Paul 
learned English ? — said the Master, with the look of 
one who does not mean to be tripped up if he can help 
himself. — But at any rate, — he continued, — the 
“natural man,” so called, is worth listening to now 
and then, for he didn’t make his nature, and the 
Devil didn’t make it; and if the Almighty made it, 
I never saw or heard of anything he made that was n’t 
worth attending to. 

The young man begged the Lady to pardon any¬ 
thing that might sound harshly in these crude thoughts 
of his. He had been taught strange things, he said, 
from old theologies, when he was a child, and had 
thought his way out of many of his early superstitions. 
As for the Young Girl, our Scheherezade, he said to 
her that she must have got dreadfully tired (at which 
she colored up and said it was no such thing), and he 
promised that, to pay for her goodness in listening, 
he would give her a lesson in astronomy the next fair 
evening, if she would be his scholar, at which she 
blushed deeper than before, and said something which 
certainly was not No. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 235 


IX. 

There was no sooner a vacancy on our side of the 
table, than the Master proposed a change of seats 
which would bring the Young Astronomer into our 
immediate neighborhood. The Scarabee was to move 
into the place of our late unlamented associate, the 
Man of Letters, so called. I was to take his place, 
the Master to take mine, and the young man that 
which had been occupied by the Master. The advan¬ 
tages of this change were obvious. The old Master 
likes an audience, plainly enough; and with myself 
on one side of him, and the young student of science, 
whose speculative turn is sufficiently shown in the 
passages from his poem, on the other side, he may 
feel quite sure of being listened to. There is only 
one trouble in the arrangement, and that is that it 
brings this young man not only close to us, but also 
next to our Scheherezade. 

I am obliged to confess that he has shown occa¬ 
sional marks of inattention even while the Master was 
discoursing in a way that I found agreeable enough. 
I am quite sure it is no intentional disrespect to the 
old Master. It seems to me rather that he has be¬ 
come interested in the astronomical lessons he has 
been giving the Young Girl. He has studied so much 
alone, that it is naturally a pleasure to him to impart 
some of his knowledge. As for his young pupil, she 
has often thought of being a teacher herself, so that 
she is of course very glad to acquire any accomplish¬ 
ment that may be useful to her in that capacity. I 
do not see any reason why some of the boarders should 
have made such remarks as they have done. One 


236 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

cannot teach astronomy to advantage, without going 
out of doors, though I confess that when two young 
people go out by daylight to study the stars, as these 
young folks have done once or twice, I do not so much 
wonder at a remark or suggestion from those who 
have nothing better to do than study their neighbors. 

I ought to have told the reader before this that I 
found, as I suspected, that our innocent-looking Sche- 
herezade was at the bottom of the popgun business. 
I watched her very closely, and one day, when the 
little monkey made us all laugh by stopping the Mem¬ 
ber of the Haouse in the middle of a speech he was 
repeating to us, — it was his great effort of the season 
on a bill for the protection of horn-pout in Little 
Muddy River, — I caught her making the signs that 
set him going. At a slight tap of her knife against 
her plate, he got all ready, and presently I saw her 
cross her knife and fork upon her plate, and as she 
did so, pop! went the small piece of artillery. The 
Member of the Haouse was just saying that this bill 
hit his constitooents in their most vital — when a pel¬ 
let hit him in the feature of his countenance most 
exposed to aggressions and least tolerant of liberties. 
The Member resented this unparliamentary treatment 
by jumping up from his chair and giving the small 
aggressor a good shaking, at the same time seizing the 
implement which had caused his wrath and breaking 
it into splinters. The Boy blubbered, the Young 
Girl changed Color, and looked as if she would cry, 
and that was the last of these interruptions. 

I must own that I have sometimes wished we had 
the popgun back, for it answered all the purpose of 
“the previous question” in a deliberative assembly. 
No doubt the Young Girl was capricious in setting 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 237 

the little engine at work, but she cut short a good 
many disquisitions that threatened to be tedious. I 
find myself often wishing for her and her small fellow- 
conspirator’s intervention, in company where I am 
supposed to be enjoying myself. When my friend the 
politician gets too far into the personal details of the 
quorum pars magna fui , I find myself all at once ex¬ 
claiming in mental articulation, Popgun ! When my 
friend the story-teller begins that protracted narrative 
which has often emptied me of all my voluntary 
laughter for the evening, he has got but a very little 
way when I say to myself, What wouldn’t I give for 
a pellet from that popgun! In short, so useful has 
that trivial implement proved as a jaw-stopper and a 
boricide , that I never go to a club or a dinner-party, 
without wishing the company included our Schehere- 
zade and That Boy with his popgun. 

How clearly I see now into the mechanism of the 
Young Girl’s audacious contrivance for regulating our 
table-talk! Her brain is tired half the time, and she 
is too nervous to listen patiently to what a quieter 
person would like well enough, or at least would not 
be annoyed by. It amused her to invent a scheme 
for managing the headstrong talkers, and also let off 
a certain spirit of mischief which in some of these ner¬ 
vous girls shows itself in much more questionable 
forms. How cunning these half-hysteric young per¬ 
sons are, to be sure! I had to watch a long time be¬ 
fore I detected the telegraphic communication between 
the two conspirators. I have no doubt she had sedu¬ 
lously schooled the little monkey to his business, and 
found great delight in the task of instruction. 

But now that our Scheherezade has become a scholar 
instead of a teacher, she seems to be undergoing a 


238 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

remarkable transformation. Astronomy is indeed a 
noble science. It may well kindle the enthusiasm of 
a youthful nature. I fancy at times that I see some¬ 
thing of that starry light which I noticed in the 
young man’s eyes gradually kindling in hers. But 
can it be astronomy alone that does it? Her color 
comes and goes more readily than when the old Mas¬ 
ter sat next her on the left. It is having this young 
man at her side, I suppose. Of course it is. I watch 
her with great, I may say tender interest. If he 
would only fall in love with her, seize upon her wan¬ 
dering affections and fancies as the Romans seized the 
Sabine virgins, lift her out of herself and her listless 
and weary drudgeries, stop the outflow of this young 
life which is draining itself away in forced literary 
labor — dear me, dear me — if, if, if — 

“ If I were God 

An’ ye were Martin Elginbrod ! ” 

I am afraid all this may never be. I fear that he is 
too much given to lonely study, to self-companion¬ 
ship, to all sorts of questionings, to looking at life as 
at a solemn show where he is only a spectator. I dare 
not build up a romance on what I have yet seen. My 
reader may, but I will answer for nothing. I shall 
wait and see. 

The old Master and I have at last made that visit 
to the Scarabee which we had so long promised our¬ 
selves. 

When we knocked at his door he came and opened 
it, instead of saying, Come in. He was surprised, I 
have no doubt, at the sound of our footsteps; for he 
rarely has a visitor, except the little monkey of a boy f 
and he may have thought a troop of marauders were 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 239 

coming to rob him of his treasures. Collectors feel so 
rich in the possession of their rarer specimens, that 
they forget how cheap their precious things seem to 
common eyes, and are as afraid of being robbed as if 
they were dealers in diamonds. They have the name 
of stealing from each other now and then, it is true, 
but many of their priceless possessions would hardly 
tempt a beggar. Values are artificial: you will not 
be able to get ten cents of the year 1799 for a dime. 

The Scarabee was reassured as soon as he saw our 
faces, and he welcomed us not ungraciously into his 
small apartment. It was hard to find a place to sit 
down, for all the chairs were already occupied by 
cases and boxes full of his favorites. I began, there¬ 
fore, looking round the room. Bugs of every size 
and aspect met my eyes wherever they turned. I felt 
for the moment as I suppose a man may feel in a fit 
of delirium tremens. Presently my attention was 
drawn towards a very odd-looking insect on the man¬ 
tel-piece. This animal was incessantly raising its 
arms as if towards heaven and clasping them together, 
as though it were wrestling in prayer. 

Do look at this creature, — I said to the Master, — 
he seems to be very hard at work at his devotions. 

Mantis religiosa, — said the Master, — I know the 
praying rogue. Mighty devout and mighty cruel; 
crushes everything he can master, or impales it on his 
spiny shanks and feeds upon it, like a gluttonous 
wretch as he is. I have seen the Mantis religiosa on 
a larger scale than this, now and then. A sacred in¬ 
sect, sir, — sacred to many tribes of men; to the Hot¬ 
tentots, to the Turks, yes, sir, and to the Frenchmen, 
who call the rascal prie dieu , and believe him to have 
special charge of children that have lost their way. 


240 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Does n’t it seem as if there was a vein of satire as 
well as of fun that ran through the solemn manifesta¬ 
tions of creative wisdom? And of deception too — do 
yon see how nearly those dried leaves resemble an 
insect ? 

They do, indeed, — I answered, — but not so 
closely as to deceive me. They remind me of an 
insect, but I could not mistake them for one. 

— Oh, you could n’t mistake those dried leaves for 
an insect, hey? Well, how can you mistake that in¬ 
sect for dried leaves ? That is the question; for in¬ 
sect it is, — phyllum siccifolium , the “walking leaf,” 
as some have called it. — The Master had a hearty 
laugh at my expense. 

The Scarabee did not seem to be amused at the 
Master’s remarks or at my blunder. Science is al¬ 
ways perfectly serious to him; and he would no more 
laugh over anything connected with his study, than a 
clergyman would laugh at a funeral. 

They send me all sorts of trumpery, — he said, — 
Orthoptera and Lepidoptera; as if a coleopterist — a 
scarabeeist — cared for such things. This business is 
no boy’s play to me. The insect population of the 
world is not even catalogued yet, and a lifetime given 
to the scarabees is a small contribution enough to their 
study. I like your men of general intelligence well 
enough, — your Linnaeuses and your Buffons and your 
Cuviers; but Cuvier had to go to Latreille for his 
insects, and if Latreille had been able to consult me, 
— yes, me, gentlemen!—he wouldn’t have made the 
blunders he did about some of the coleoptera. 

The old Master, as I think you must have found out 
by this time, — you, Beloved, I mean, who read every 
word, — has a reasonably good opinion, as perhaps he 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 241 


has a right to have, of his own intelligence and ac¬ 
quirements. The Scarabee’s exultation and glow as 
he spoke of the errors of the great entomologist which 
he himself could have corrected, had the effect on the 
old Master which a lusty crow has upon the feathered 
champion of the neighboring barnyard. He too knew 
something about insects. Had he not discovered a 
new tabanus ? Had he not made preparations of the 
very coleoptera the Scarabee studied so exclusively, 
— preparations which the illustrious Swammerdam 
would not have been ashamed of, and dissected a me- 
lolontha as exquisitely as Strauss Durckheim himself 
ever did it? So the Master, recalling these studies of 
his and certain difficult and disputed points at which 
he had labored in one of his entomological paroxysms, 
put a question which there can be little doubt was in¬ 
tended to puzzle the Scarabee, and perhaps, — for the 
best of us is human (I am beginning to love the old 
Master, but he has his little weaknesses, thank Heaven, 
like the rest of us), — I say perhaps, was meant to 
show that some folks knew as much about some things 
as some other folks. 

The little dried-up specialist did not dilate into 
fighting dimensions as — perhaps, again — the Master 
may have thought he would. He looked a mild sur¬ 
prise, but remained as quiet as one of his own beetles 
when you touch him and he makes believe he is dead. 
The blank silence became oppressive. Was the Scar¬ 
abee crushed, as so many of his namesakes are crushed, 
under the heel of this trampling omniscient? 

At last the Scarabee creaked out very slowly, “Did 
I understand you to ask the following question, to 
wit? ” and so forth; for I was quite out of my depth, 
and only know that he repeated the Master’s some¬ 
what complex inquiry, word for word. 


242 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— That was exactly my question, — said the Mas¬ 
ter, — and I hope it is not uncivil to ask one which 
seems to me to he a puzzler. 

Not uncivil in the least, — said the Scarabee, with 
something as much like a look of triumph as his dry 
face permitted, — not uncivil at all, but a rather ex¬ 
traordinary question to ask at this date of entomolo¬ 
gical history. I settled that question some years ago, 
by a series of dissections, six-and-thirty in number, 
reported in an essay I can show you and would give 
you a copy of, but that I am a little restricted in my 
revenue, and our Society has to be economical, so I 
have but this one. You see, sir,— and he went on 
with elytra and antennae and tarsi and metatarsi and 
tracheae and stomata and wing-muscles and leg-mus¬ 
cles and ganglions, — all plain enough, I do not 
doubt, to those accustomed to handling dor-bugs and 
squash-bugs and such undesirable objects of affection 
to all but naturalists. 

He paused when he got through, not for an answer, 
for there evidently was none, but to see how the Mas¬ 
ter would take it. The Scarabee had had it all his 
own way. 

The Master was loyal to his own generous nature. 
He felt as a peaceful citizen might feel who had 
squared off at a stranger for some supposed wrong, 
and suddenly discovered that he was undertaking to 
chastise Mr. Dick Curtis, “the pet of the Fancy,” or 
Mr. Joshua Hudson, “the John Bull fighter.” 

He felt the absurdity of his discomfiture, for he 
turned to me good-naturedly, and said,— 

“ Poor Johnny Raw ! What madness could impel 
So rum a flat to face so prime a swell ? ” 

To tell the truth, I rather think the Master enjoyed 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 243 

his own defeat. The Scarabee had a right to his vic¬ 
tory; a man does not give his life to the study of a 
single limited subject for nothing, and the moment we 
come across a first-class expert we begin to take a 
pride in his superiority. It cannot offend us, who 
have no right at all to be his match on his own ground. 
Besides, there is a very curious sense of satisfaction 
in getting a fair chance to sneer at ourselves and scoff 
at our own pretensions. The first person of our dual 
consciousness has been smirking and rubbing his hands 
and felicitating himself on his innumerable superior¬ 
ities, until we have grown a little tired of him. Then, 
when the other fellow, the critic, the cynic, the Shi- 
mei, who has been quiet, letting self-love and self- 
glorification have their perfect work, opens fire upon 
the first half of our personality and overwhelms it 
with that wonderful vocabulary of abuse of which he 
is the unrivalled master, there is no denying that he 
enjoys it immensely; and as he is ourself for the mo¬ 
ment, or at least the chief portion of ourself (the other 
half-self retiring into a dim corner of semiconscious¬ 
ness and cowering under the storm of sneers and con¬ 
tumely, — you follow me perfectly, Beloved, — the 
way is as plain as the path of the babe to the mater¬ 
nal fount), as, I say, the abusive fellow is the chief 
part of us for the time, and he likes to exercise his 
slanderous vocabulary, we on the whole enjoy a brief 
season of self-depreciation and self-scolding very 
heartily. 

It is quite certain that both of us, the Master and 
myself, conceived on the instant a respect for the 
Scarabee which we had not before felt. He had grap¬ 
pled with one difficulty at any rate and mastered it. 
He had settled one thing, at least, so it appeared, in 


244 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

such a way that it was not to he brought up again. 
And now he was determined, if it cost him the effort 
of all his remaining days, to close another discussion 
and put forever to rest the anxious doubts about the 
larva of meloe. 

— Your thirty-six dissections must have cost you a 
deal of time and labor, — the Master said. 

— What have I to do with time, but to fill it up 
with labor? — answered the Scarabee. — It is my 
meat and drink to work over my beetles. My holi¬ 
days are when I get a rare specimen. My rest is to 
watch the habits of insects, — those that I do not 
pretend to study. Here is my muscarium , my home 
for house-flies; very interesting creatures; here they 
breed and buzz and feed and enjoy themselves, and 
die in a good old age of a few months. My favorite 
insect lives in this other case; she is at home, but in 
her private-chamber; you shall see her. 

He tapped on the glass lightly, and a large, gray, 
hairy spider came forth from the hollow of a funnel¬ 
like web. 

— And this is all the friend you have to love ? — 
said the Master, with a tenderness in his voice which 
made the question very significant. 

— Nothing else loves me better than she does, that 
I know of, — he answered. 

— To think of it! Not even a dog to lick his 
hand, or a cat to purr and rub her fur against him! 
Oh, these boarding-houses, these boarding-houses! 
What forlorn people one sees stranded on their deso¬ 
late shores! Decayed gentlewomen with the poor 
wrecks of what once made their households beautiful, 
disposed around them in narrow chambers as they 
best may be, coming down day after day, poor souls! 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 245 

to sit at the board with strangers; their hearts full 
of sad memories which have no language but a sigh, 
no record but the lines of sorrow on their features; 
orphans, creatures with growing tendrils and nothing 
to cling to; lonely rich men, casting about them what 
to do with the wealth they never knew how to enjoy, 
when they shall no longer worry over keeping and in¬ 
creasing it; young men and young women, left to 
their instincts, unguarded, unwatched, save by mali¬ 
cious eyes, which are sure to be found and to find oc¬ 
cupation in these miscellaneous collections of human 
beings; and now and then a shred of humanity like 
this little adust specialist, with just the resources 
needed to keep the “radical moisture” from entirely 
exhaling from his attenuated organism, and busying 
himself over a point of science, or compiling a hymn- 
book, or editing a grammar or a dictionary; — such 
are the tenants of boarding-houses whom we cannot 
think of without feeling how sad it is when the wind 
is not tempered to the shorn lamb; when the solitary, 
whose hearts are shrivelling, are not set in families! 

The Master was greatly interested in the Scara- 
bee’s Muscarium. 

— I don’t remember,—he said,—that I have 
heard of such a thing as that before. Mighty curious 
creatures, these same house-flies! Talk about mira¬ 
cles! Was there ever anything more miraculous, so 
far as our common observation goes, than the coming 
and the going of these creatures? Why didn’t Job 
ask where the flies come from and where they go to? 
I did not say that you and I don’t know, but how 
many people do know anything about it? Where are 
the cradles of the young flies? Where are the ceme¬ 
teries of the dead ones, or do they die at all except 


246 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

when we kill them? You think all the flies of the 
year are dead and gone, and there comes a warm day 
and all at once there is a general resurrection of ’em; 
they had been taking a nap, that is all. 

— I suppose you do not trust your spider in the 
Muscarium ? — said I, addressing the Scarabee. 

— Not exactly, —he answered, —she is a terrible 
creature. She loves me, I think, but she is a killer 
and a cannibal among other insects. I wanted to 
pair her with a male spider, but it wouldn’t do. 

— Would n’t do ? — said I, — why not ? Don’t 
spiders have their mates as well as other folks? 

— Oh yes, sometimes; but the females are apt to be 
particular, and if they don’t like the mate you offer 
them they fall upon him and kill him and eat him up. 
You see they are a great deal bigger and stronger 
than the males, and they are always hungry and not 
always particularly anxious to have one of the other 
sex bothering round. 

— Woman’s rights! — said I, —there you have it! 
Why don’t those talking ladies take a spider as their 
emblem ? Let them form arachnoid associations, — 
spinsters and spiders would be a good motto. 

— The Master smiled. I think it was an eleemosy¬ 
nary smile, for my pleasantry seems to me a particu¬ 
larly basso rilievo , as I look upon it in cold blood. 
But conversation at the best is only a thin sprinkling 
of occasional felicities set in platitudes and common¬ 
places. I never heard people talk like the characters 
in the “School for Scandal,” — I should very much 
like to. — I say the Master smiled. But the Scarabee 
did not relax a muscle of his countenance. 

— There are persons whom the very mildest of 
facetiae sets off into such convulsions of laughter, that 


THE POET AT THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 247 

one is afraid lest they should injure themselves. 
Even when a jest misses fire completely, so that it is 
no jest at all, but only a jocular intention, they laugh 
just as heartily. Leave out the point of your story, 
get the word wrong on the duplicity of which the pun 
that was to excite hilarity depended, and they still 
honor your abortive attempt with the most lusty and 
vociferous merriment. 

There is a very opposite class of persons whom any¬ 
thing in the nature of a joke perplexes, troubles, and 
even sometimes irritates, seeming to make them 
think they are trifled with, if not insulted. If you 
are fortunate enough to set the whole table laughing, 
one of this class of persons will look inquiringly 
round, as if something had happened, and, seeing 
everybody apparently amused but himself, feel as if 
he was being laughed at, or at any rate as if some¬ 
thing had been said which he was not to hear. Often, 
however, it does not go so far as this, and there is 
nothing more than mere insensibility to the cause of 
other people’s laughter, a sort of joke-blindness, com¬ 
parable to the well-known color-blindness with which 
many persons are afflicted as a congenital incapacity. 

I have never seen the Scarabee smile. I have seen 
him take off his goggles, — he breakfasts in these 
occasionally, — I suppose when he has been tiring 
his poor old eyes out over night gazing through his 
microscope, — I have seen him take his goggles off, 
I say, and stare about him, when the rest of us were 
laughing at something which amused us, but his fea¬ 
tures betrayed nothing more than a certain bewilder¬ 
ment, as if we had been foreigners talking in an un¬ 
known tongue. I do not think it was a mere fancy 
of mine that he bears a kind of resemblance to the 


248 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


tribe of insects he gives his life to studying. His 
shiny black coat; his rounded back, convex with 
years of stooping over his minute work; his angular 
movements, made natural to him by his habitual 
style of manipulation; the aridity of his organism, 
with which his voice is in perfect keeping; — all 
these marks of his special sedentary occupation are 
so nearly what might be expected, and indeed so much 
in accordance with the more general fact that a man’s 
aspect is subdued to the look of what he works in, 
that I do not feel disposed to accuse myself of exag¬ 
geration in my account of the Scarabee’s appearance. 
But I think he has learned something else of his co¬ 
leopterous friends. The beetles never smile. Their 
physiognomy is not adapted to the display of the 
emotions; the lateral movement of their jaws being 
effective for alimentary purposes, but very limited in 
its gamut of expression. It is with these unemotional 
beings that the Scarabee passes his life. He has but 
one object, and that is perfectly serious, to his mind, 
in fact, of absorbing interest and importance. In 
one aspect of the matter he is quite right, for if the 
Creator has taken the trouble to make one of His crea¬ 
tures in just such a way and not otherwise, from the 
beginning of its existence on our planet in ages of un¬ 
known remoteness to the present time, the man who 
first explains His idea to us is charged with a revela¬ 
tion. It is by no means impossible that there may be 
angels in the celestial hierarchy to whom it would be 
new and interesting. I have often thought that spirits 
of a higher order than man might be willing to learn 
something from a human mind like that of Newton, 
and I see no reason why an angelic being might not 
be glad to hear a lecture from Mr. Huxley, or Mr. 
Tyndall, or one of our friends at Cambridge. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 249 

I have been sinuous as the Links of Forth seen 
from Stirling Castle, or as that other river which 
threads the Berkshire valley and runs, a perennial 
stream, through my memory, — from which I please 
myself with thinking that I have learned to wind 
without fretting against the shore, or forgetting 
where I am flowing, — sinuous, I say, but not jerky, 
— no, not jerky nor hard to follow for a reader of the 
right sort, in the prime of life and full possession of 
his or her faculties. 

— All this last page or so, you readily understand, 
has been my private talk with you, the Reader. The 
cue of the conversation which I interrupted by this 
digression is to be found in the words “a good motto,” 
from which I begin my acccount of the visit again. 

— Do you receive many visitors, — I mean verte¬ 
brates, not articulates ? — said the Master. 

I thought this question might perhaps bring il disi - 
ato riso, the long-wished-for smile, but the Scarabee 
interpreted it in the simplest zoological sense, and 
neglected its hint of playfulness with the most abso¬ 
lute unconsciousness, apparently, of anything not en¬ 
tirely serious and literal. 

— You mean friends, I suppose, — he answered. — 
I have correspondents, but I have no friends except 
this spider. I live alone, except when I go to my 
subsection meetings; I get a box of insects now and 
then, and send a few beetles to coleopterists in other 
entomological districts; but science is exacting, and 
a man that wants to leave his record has not much 
time for friendship. There is no great chance either 
for making friends among naturalists. People that 
are at work on different things do not care a great 


250 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

deal for each other’s specialties, and people that work 
on the same thing are always afraid lest one should 
get ahead of the other, or steal some of his ideas be¬ 
fore he has made them public. There are none too 
many people you can trust in your laboratory. I 
thought I had a friend once, but he watched me at 
work and stole the discovery of a new species from 
me, and, what is more, had it named after himself. 
Since that time I have liked spiders better than men. 
They are hungry and savage, but at any rate they 
spin their own webs out of their own insides. I like 
very well to talk with gentlemen that play with my 
branch of entomology; I do not doubt it amused you, 
and if you want to see anything I can show you, I 
shall have no scruple in letting you see it. I have 
never had any complaint to make of amatoors. 

— Upon my honor, — I would hold my right hand 
up and take my Bible-oatli, if it was not busy with 
the pen at this moment, — I do not believe the Scar- 
abee had the least idea in the world of the satire on 
the student of the Order of Things implied in his 
invitation to the “amatoor.” As for the Master, he 
stood fire perfectly, as he always does; but the idea 
that he, who had worked a considerable part of several 
seasons at examining and preparing insects, who be¬ 
lieved himself to have given a new tab anus to the cat¬ 
alogue of native diptera, the idea that he was playing 
with science, and might be trusted anywhere as a 
harmless amateur, from whom no expert could possi¬ 
bly fear any anticipation of his unpublished discov¬ 
eries, went beyond anything set down in that book of 
his which contained so much of the strainings of his 
wisdom. 

The poor little Scarabee began fidgeting round 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 251 

about this time, and uttering some half-audible words, 
apologetical, partly, and involving an allusion to re¬ 
freshments. As he spoke, he opened a small cup¬ 
board, and as he did so out bolted an uninvited ten¬ 
ant of the same, long in person, sable in hue, and swift 
of movement, on seeing which the Scarabee simply 
said, without emotion, blatta , but I, forgetting what 
was due to good manners, exclaimed cockroach ! 

We could not make up our minds to tax the Scara¬ 
bee’s hospitality, already levied upon by the voracious 
articulate. So we both alleged a state of utter reple¬ 
tion, and did not solve the mystery of the contents of 
the cupboard, —not too luxurious, it may be conjec¬ 
tured, and yet kindly offered, so that we felt there was 
a moist filament of the social instinct running like a 
nerve through that exsiccated and ahnost anhydrous 
organism. 

We left him with professions of esteem and respect 
which were real. We had gone, not to scoff, but very 
probably to smile, and I will not say we did not. 
But the Master was more thoughtful than usual. 

— If I had not solemnly dedicated myself to the 
study of the Order of Things, — he said, — I do ver¬ 
ily believe I would give what remains to me of life to 
the investigation of some single point I could utterly 
eviscerate and leave finally settled for the instruction 
and, it may be, the admiration of all coming time. 
The keel ploughs ten thousand leagues of ocean and 
leaves no trace of its deep-graven furrows. The 
chisel scars only a few inches on the face of a rock, 
but the story it has traced is read by a hundred gen¬ 
erations. The eagle leaves no track of his path, no 
memory of the place where he built his nest; but a 
patient mollusk has bored a little hole in a marble 


252 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


column of the temple of Serapis, and the monument 
of his labor outlasts the altar and the statue of the 
divinity. 

— Whew! — said I to myself, — that sounds a little 
like what we college boys used to call a “squirt.” — 
The Master guessed my thought and said, smiling, 

— That is from one of my old lectures. A man’s 
tongue wags along quietly enough, but his pen begins 
prancing as soon as it touches paper. I know what 
you are thinking — you ’re thinking this is a squirt. 
That word has taken the nonsense out of a good 
many high-stepping fellows. But it did a good deal 
of harm too, and it was a vulgar lot that applied it 
oftenest. 

I am at last perfectly satisfied that our Landlady 
has no designs on the Capitalist, and as well con¬ 
vinced that any fancy of mine that he was like to 
make love to her was a mistake. The good woman 
is too much absorbed in her children, and more espe¬ 
cially in “the Doctor,” as she delights to call her son, 
to be the prey of any foolish desire of changing her 
condition. She is doing very well as it is, and if the 
young man succeeds, as I have little question that he 
will, I think it probable enough that she will retire 
from her position as the head of a boarding-house. 
We have all liked the good woman who have lived 
with her, — I mean we three friends who have put 
ourselves on record. Her talk, I must confess, is a 
little diffuse and not always absolutely correct, ac¬ 
cording to the standard of the great Worcester; she 
is subject to lachrymose cataclysms and semiconvul- 
sive upheavals when she reverts in memory to her past 
trials, and especially when she recalls the virtues of 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 253 

her deceased spouse, who was, I suspect, an adjunct 
such as one finds not rarely annexed to a capable 
matron in charge of an establishment like hers; that 
is to say, an easy-going, harmless, fetch-and-carry, 
carve-and-help, get-out-of-the-way kind of neuter, 
who comes up three times (as they say drowning peo¬ 
ple do) every day, namely, at breakfast, dinner, and 
tea, and disappears, submerged beneath the waves of 
life, during the intervals of these events. 

It is a source of genuine delight to me, who am of 
a kindly nature enough, according to my own reck¬ 
oning, to watch the good woman, and see what looks 
of pride and affection she bestows upon her Benjamin, 
and how, in spite of herself, the maternal feeling be¬ 
trays its influence in her dispensations of those delica¬ 
cies which are the exceptional element in our enter¬ 
tainments. I will not say that Benjamin’s mess, like 
his Scripture namesake’s, is five times as large as 
that of any of the others, for this would imply either 
an economical distribution to the guests in general or 
heaping the poor young man’s plate in a way that 
would spoil the appetite of an Esquimau, but you may 
be sure he fares well if anybody does; and I would 
have you understand that our Landlady knows what 
is what as well as who is who. 

I begin really to entertain very sanguine expecta¬ 
tions of young Doctor Benjamin Franklin. He has 
lately been treating a patient whose good-will may 
prove of great importance to him. The Capitalist 
hurt one of his fingers somehow or other, and re¬ 
quested our young doctor to take a look at it. The 
young doctor asked nothing better than to take charge 
of the case, which proved more serious than might 
have been at first expected, and kept him in atten- 


254 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

dance more than a week. There was one very odd 
thing about it. The Capitalist seemed to have an 
idea that he was like to be ruined in the matter of 
bandages, — small strips of worn linen which any old 
woman could have spared him from her rag-bag, but 
which, with that strange perversity which long habits 
of economy give to a good many elderly people, he 
seemed to think were as precious as if they had been 
turned into paper and stamped with promises to pay 
in thousands, from the national treasury. It was im¬ 
possible to get this whim out of him, and the young 
doctor had tact enough to humor him in it. All this 
did not look very promising for the state of mind in 
which the patient was like to receive his bill for at¬ 
tendance when that should be presented. Doctor 
Benjamin was man enough, however, to come up to 
the mark, and sent him in such an account as it was 
becoming to send a man of ample means who had 
been diligently and skilfully cared for. He looked 
forward with some uncertainty as to how it would be 
received. Perhaps his patient would try to beat him 
down, and Doctor Benjamin made up his mind to 
have the whole or nothing. Perhaps he would pay 
the whole amount, but with a look, and possibly a 
word, that would make every dollar of it burn like a 
blister. 

Doctor Benjamin’s conjectures were not unnatural, 
but quite remote from the actual fact. As soon as 
his patient had got entirely well, the young physician 
sent in his bill. The Capitalist requested him to step 
into his room with him, and paid the full charge in 
the handsomest and most gratifying way, thanking 
him for his skill and attention, and assuring him that 
he had had great satisfaction in submitting himself 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 255 

to such competent hands, and should certainly apply 
to him again in case he should have any occasion for 
a medical adviser. We must not be too sagacious in 
judging people by the little excrescences of their char¬ 
acter. Ex pede Hercidem may often prove safe 
enough, but ex verruca Tullium is liable to mislead a 
hasty judge of his fellow-men. 

I have studied the people called misers and thought 
a good deal about them. In former years I used to 
keep a little gold by me in order to ascertain for my¬ 
self exactly the amount of pleasure to be got out of 
handling it; this being the traditional delight of the 
old-fashioned miser. It is by no means to be despised. 
Three or four hundred dollars in double-eagles will do 
very well to experiment on. There is something very 
agreeable in the yellow gleam, very musical in the 
metallic clink, very satisfying in the singular weight, 
and very stimulating in the feeling that all the world 
over these same yellow disks are the master-keys that 
let one in wherever he wants to go, the servants that 
bring him pretty nearly everything he wants, except 
virtue, — and a good deal of what passes for that. I 
confess, then, to an honest liking for the splendors 
and the specific gravity and the manifold potentiality 
of the royal metal, and I understand, after a certain 
imperfect fashion, the delight that an old ragged 
wretch, starving himself in a crazy hovel, takes in 
stuffing guineas into old stockings and filling earthen 
pots with sovereigns, and every now and then visiting 
his hoards and fingering the fat pieces, and thinking 
over all that they represent of earthly and angelic and 
diabolic energy. A miser pouring out his guineas 
into his palm and bathing his shrivelled and trembling 
hands in the yellow heaps before him, is not the pro- 


256 THE POET AT THE BKEAKF A ST-TABLE. 

saic being we are in the habit of thinking him. He is 
a dreamer, almost a poet. Yon and I read a novel or 
a poem to help our imaginations to build up palaces, 
and transport us into the emotional states and the fe¬ 
licitous conditions of the ideal characters pictured in 
the book we are reading. But think of him and the 
significance of the symbols he is handling as compared 
with the empty syllables and words we are using to 
build our aerial edifices with! In this hand he holds 
the smile of beauty and in that the dagger of revenge. 
The contents of that old glove will buy him the will¬ 
ing service of many an adroit sinner, and with what 
that coarse sack contains he can purchase the prayers 
of holy men for all succeeding time. In this chest is 
a castle in Spain, a real one, and not only in Spain, 
but anywhere he will choose to have it. If he would 
know what is the liberality of judgment of any of the 
straiter sects, he has only to hand over that box of 
rouleaux to the trustees of one of its educational insti¬ 
tutions for the endowment of two or three professor¬ 
ships. If he would dream of being remembered by 
coming generations, what monument so enduring as a 
college building that shall bear his name, and even 
when its solid masonry shall crumble give place to 
another still charged with the same sacred duty of per¬ 
petuating his remembrance. Who was Sir Matthew 
Holworthy, that his name is a household word on the 
lips of thousands of scholars, and will be centuries 
hence, as that of Walter de Merton, dead six hundred 
years ago, is to-day at Oxford? Who was Mistress 
Holden, that she should be blessed among women by 
having her name spoken gratefully and the little edi¬ 
fice she caused to be erected preserved as her monu¬ 
ment from generation to generation ? All these pos- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 257 


sibilities, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, the 
pride of life; the tears of grateful orphans by the 
gallon; the prayers of Westminster Assembly’s Cate¬ 
chism divines by the thousand; the masses of priests 
by the century; — all these things, and more if more 
there be that the imagination of a lover of gold is 
likely to range over, the miser hears and sees and 
feels and hugs and enjoys as he paddles with his lean 
hands among the sliding, shining, ringing, innocent¬ 
looking bits of yellow metal, toying with them as the 
lion-tamer handles the great carnivorous monster, 
whose might and whose terrors are child’s play to the 
latent forces and power of harm-doing of the glitter¬ 
ing counters played with in the great game between 
angels and devils. 

I have seen a good deal of misers, and I think I 
understand them as well as most persons do. But 
the Capitalist’s economy in rags and his liberality to 
the young doctor are very oddly contrasted with each 
other. I should not be surprised at any time to hear 
that he had endowed a scholarship or professorship or 
built a college dormitory, in spite of his curious parsi¬ 
mony in old linen. 

I do not know where our Young Astronomer got 
the notions that he expresses so freely in the lines 
that follow. I think the statement is true, however, 
which I see in one of the most popular Cyclopaedias, 
that “the non-clerical mind in all ages is disposed to 
look favorably upon the doctrine of the universal res¬ 
toration to holiness and happiness of all fallen intelli¬ 
gences, whether human or angelic.” Certainly, most 
of the poets who have reached the heart of men, since 
Burns dropped the tear for poor “auld Nickie-ben” 


258 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


that softened the stony-hearted theology of Scotland, 
have had “non-clerical” minds, and I suppose our 
young friend is in his humble way an optimist like 
them. What he says in verse is very much the same 
thing as what is said in prose in all companies, and 
thought by a great many who are thankful to anybody 
that will say it for them, — not a few clerical as well 
as “non-clerical” persons among them. 


WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS, 

v. 

What am I but the creature Thou hast made ? 

What have I save the blessings Thou hast lent ? 
What hope I but Thy mercy and Thy love ? 

Who but myself shall cloud my soul with fear ? 
Whose hand protect me from myself but Thine ? 

I claim the rights of weakness, I, the babe, 

Call on my sire to shield me from the ills 
That still beset my path, not trying me 
With snares beyond my wisdom or my strength, 

He knowing I shall use them to my harm, 

And find a tenfold misery in the sense 
That in my childlike folly I have sprung 
The trap upon myself as vermin use 
Drawn by the cunning bait to certain doom. 

Who wrought the wondrous charm that leads us on 
To sweet perdition, but the self-same power 
That set the fearful engine to destroy 
His wretched offspring (as the Rabbis tell), 

And hid its yawning jaws and treacherous springs 
In such a show of innocent sweet flowers 
It lured the sinless angels and they fell ? 

Ah ! He who prayed the prayer of all mankind 
Summed in those few brief words the mightiest plea 
For erring souls before the courts of heaven,— 

Save us from being tempted, — lest yre fall! 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

If we are only as the potter’s clay 
Made to be fashioned as the artist wills, 

And broken into shards if we offend 
The eye of Him who made us, it is well; 

Such love as the insensate lump of clay 
That spins upon the swift-revolving wheel 
Bears to the hand that shapes its growing form,«« 
Such love, no more, will be our hearts’ return 
* To the great Master-workman for his care, — 

Or would be, save that this, our breathing clay, 

Is intertwined with fine innumerous threads 
That make it conscious in its framer’s hand ; 

And this He must remember who has filled 
These vessels with the deadly draught of life, — 
Life, that means death to all it claims. Our love 
Must kindle in the ray that streams from heaven, 
A faint reflection of the light divine ; 

The sun must warm the earth before the rose 
Can show her inmost heart-leaves to the sun. 

He yields some fraction of the Maker’s right 
Who gives the quivering nerve its sense of pain ; 

Is there not something in the pleading eye 
Of the poor brute that suffers, which arraigns 
The law that bids it suffer ? Has it not 
A claim for some remembrance in the book 
That fills its pages with the idle words 
Spoken of men ? Or is it only clay, 

Bleeding and aching in the potter’s hand, 

Yet all his own to treat it as he will 
And when he will to cast it at his feet, 

Shattered, dishonored, lost forevermore ? 

My dog loves me, but could he look beyond 
His earthly master, would his love extend 
To Him who — Hush ! I will not doubt that He 
Is better chan our fears, and will not wrong 
The least, the meanest of created things I 

He would not trust me with the smallest orb 
That circles through the sky ; he would not give 
A meteor to my guidance ; would not leave 


259 


260 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


The coloring of a cloudlet to my hand ; 

He locks my beating heart beneath its bars 
And keeps the key himself ; he measures out 
The draughts of vital breath that warm my blood, 
Winds up the springs of instinct which uncoil, 
Each in its season ; ties me to my home, 

My race, my time, my nation, and my creed 
So closely that if I but slip my wrist 
Out of the band that cuts it to the bone, 

Men say, “ He hath a devil ”; he has lent 
All that I hold in trust, as unto one 
By reason of his weakness and his years 
Not fit to hold the smallest shred in fee 
Of those most common things he calls his own — 
And yet — my Rabbi tells me — he has left 
The care of that to which a million worlds 
Filled with unconscious life were less than naught, 
Has left that mighty universe, the Soul, 

To the weak guidance of our baby hands, 

Turned us adrift with our immortal charge, 

Let the foul fiends have access at their will, 

Taking the shape of angels, to our hearts, — 

Our hearts already poisoned through and through 
With the fierce virus of ancestral sin. 

If what my Rabbi tells me is the truth, 

Why did the choir of angels sing for joy ? 

Heaven must be compassed in a narrow space, 

And offer more than room enough for all 
That pass its portals ; but the underworld, 

The godless realm, the place where demons forge 
Their fiery darts and adamantine chains, 

Must swarm with ghosts that for a little while 
Had worn the garb of flesh, and being heirs 
Of all the dulness of their stolid sires, 

And all the erring instincts of their tribe, 

Nature’s own teaching, rudiments of “ sin,” 

Fell headlong in the snare that could not fail 
To trap the wretched creatures shaped of clay 
And cursed with sense enough to lose their souls ! 

Brother, thy heart is troubled at my word ; 
Sister, I see the cloud is on thy brow. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 261 


He will not blame me, He who sends not peace, 

But sends a sword, and bids us strike amain 
At Error’s gilded crest, where in the van 
Of earth’s great army, mingling with the best 
And bravest of its leaders, shouting loud 
The battle-cries that yesterday have led 
The host of Truth to victory, but to-day 
Are watchwords of the laggard and the slave, 

He leads his dazzled cohorts. God has made 
This world a strife of atoms and of spheres; 

With every breath I sigh myself away 
And take my tribute from the wandering wind 
To fan the flame of life’s consuming fire ; 

So, while my thought has life, it needs must burn, 

And burning, set the stubble-fields ablaze, 

Where all the harvest long ago was reaped 
And safely garnered in the ancient barns, 

But still the gleaners, groping for their food, 

Go blindly feeling through the close-shorn straw, 

While the young reapers flash their glittering steel 
Where later suns have ripened nobler grain ! 

We listened to these lines in silence. They were 
evidently written honestly, and with feeling, and no 
doubt meant to be reverential. I thought, however, 
the Lady looked rather serious as he finished reading. 
The Young Girl’s cheeks were flushed, but she was 
not in the mood for criticism. 

As we came away the Master said to me — The 
stubble-fields are mighty slow to take fire. These 
young fellows catch up with the world’s ideas one 
after another, — they have been tamed a long while, 
but they find them running loose in their minds, and 
think they are ferae naturae . They remind me of 
young sportsmen who fire at the first feathers they 
see, and bring down a barnyard fowl. But the 
chicken may be worth bagging for all that, he said, 
good-humoredly. 


262 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


X. 

Caveat Lector: Let the reader look out for him¬ 
self. The old Master, whose words I have so fre¬ 
quently quoted and shall quote more of, is a dogmatist 
who lays down the law, ex cathedra , from the chair of 
his own personality. I do not deny that he has the 
ambition of knowing something about a greater num¬ 
ber of subjects than any one man ought to meddle 
with, except in a very humble and modest way. And 
that is not his way. There was no doubt something 
of humorous bravado in his saying that the actual 
“order of things” did not offer a field sufficiently 
ample for his intelligence. But if I found fault with 
him, which would be easy enough, I should say that 
he holds and expresses definite opinions about mat¬ 
ters that he could afford to leave open questions, or 
ask the judgment of others about. But I do not 
want to find fault with him. If he does not settle all 
the points he speaks of so authoritatively, he sets me 
thinking about them, and I like a man as a companion 
who is not afraid of a half-truth. I know he says 
some things peremptorily that he may inwardly debate 
with himself. There are two ways of dealing with 
assertions of this kind. One may attack them on the 
false side and perhaps gain a conversational victory. 
But I like better to take them up on the true side and 
see how much can be made of that aspect of the dog¬ 
matic assertion. It is the only comfortable way of 
dealing with persons like the old Master. 

There have been three famous talkers in Great 
Britain, either of whom would illustrate what I say 
about dogmatists well enough for my purpose. You 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 263 


cannot doubt to what three I refer: Samuel the First, 
Samuel the Second, and Thomas, last of the Dynasty. 
(I mean the living Thomas and not Thomas B.) 

I say the last of the Dynasty, for the conversational 
dogmatist on the imperial scale becomes every year 
more and more an impossibility. If he is in intelli¬ 
gent company he will be almost sure to find some one 
who knows more about some of the subjects he gener¬ 
alizes upon than any wholesale thinker who handles 
knowledge by the cargo is like to know. I find my¬ 
self, at certain intervals, in the society of a nmnber 
of experts in science, literature, and art, who cover a 
pretty wide range, taking them all together, of hu¬ 
man knowledge. I have not the least doubt that if 
the great Dr. Samuel Johnson should come in and sit 
with this company at one of their Saturday dinners, 
he would be listened to, as he always was, with re¬ 
spect and attention. But there are subjects upon 
which the great talker could speak magisterially in his 
time and at his club, upon which so wise a man 
would express himself guardedly at the meeting where 
I have supposed him a guest. We have a scientific 
man or two among us, for instance, who would be 
entitled to smile at the good Doctor’s estimate of their 
labors, as I give it here: — 

“ Of those that spin out life in trifles and die with¬ 
out a memorial, many flatter themselves with high 
opinion of their own importance and imagine that 
they are every day adding some improvement to human 
life.”—“Some turn the wheel of electricity, some 
suspend rings to a loadstone, and find that what they 
did yesterday they can do again to-day. Some regis¬ 
ter the changes of the wind, and die fully convinced 
that the wind is changeable. 


264 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

“There are men yet more profound, who have 
heard that two colorless liquors may produce a color 
by union, and that two cold bodies will grow hot if 
they are mingled; they mingle them, and produce the 
effect expected, say it is strange, and mingle them 
again.” 

I cannot transcribe this extract without an intense 
inward delight in its wit and a full recognition of its 
thorough half-truthfulness. Yet if while the great 
moralist is indulging in these vivacities, he can be 
imagined as receiving a message from Mr. Boswell or 
Mrs. Thrale flashed through the depths of the ocean, 
we can suppose he might be tempted to indulge in 
another oracular utterance, something like this: — 

— A wise man recognizes the convenience of a gen¬ 
eral statement, but he bows to the authority of a par¬ 
ticular fact. He who would bound the possibilities of 
human knowledge by the limitations of present ac¬ 
quirements would take the dimensions of the infant in 
ordering the habiliments of the adult. It is the pro¬ 
vince of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of 
wisdom to listen. Will the Professor have the kind¬ 
ness to inform me by what steps of gradual develop¬ 
ment the ring and the loadstone, which were but yes¬ 
terday the toys of children and idlers, have become 
the means of approximating the intelligences of remote 
continents, and wafting emotions unchilled through 
the abysses of the no longer unfathomable deep ? 

— This, you understand, Beloved, is only a con¬ 
ventional imitation of the Doctor’s style of talking. 
He wrote in grand balanced phrases, but his conver¬ 
sation was good, lusty, off-hand familiar talk. He 
used very often to have it all his own way. If he 
came back to us we must remember that to treat him 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 265 

fairly we must suppose him on a level with the know¬ 
ledge of our own time. But that knowledge is more 
specialized, a great deal, than knowledge was in his 
day. Men cannot talk about things they have seen 
from the outside with the same magisterial authority 
the talking dynasty pretended to. The sturdy old 
moralist felt grand enough, no doubt, when he said, 
“He that is growing great and happy by electrify¬ 
ing a bottle wonders how the world can be engaged 
by trifling prattle about war or peace.” Benjamin 
Franklin was one of these idlers who were electrifying 
bottles, but he also found time to engage in the trifling 
prattle about war and peace going on in those times. 
The talking Doctor hits him very hard in “Taxation 
no Tyranny”: “Those who wrote the Address (of the 
American Congress in 1775), though they have shown 
no great extent or profundity of mind, are yet prob¬ 
ably wiser than to believe it: but they have been 
taught by some master of mischief how to put in mo¬ 
tion the engine of political electricity; to attract by 
the sounds of Liberty and Property, to repel by those 
of Popery and Slavery; and to give the great stroke 
by the name of Boston .” 

The talking dynasty has always been hard upon us 
Americans. King Samuel II. says: “ It is, I believe, 
a fact verified beyond doubt, that some years ago it 
was impossible to obtain a copy of the Newgate Cal¬ 
endar, as they had all been bought up by the Ameri¬ 
cans, whether to suppress the blazon of their forefa¬ 
thers or to assist in their genealogical researches I 
could never learn satisfactorily.” 

As for King Thomas, the last of the monological 
succession, he made such a piece of work with his 
prophecies and his sarcasms about our little trouble 


266 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


witli some of the Southern States, that we came 
rather to pity him for his whims and crotchets than to 
get angry with him for calling us bores and other 
unamiable names. 

I do not think we believe things because consider¬ 
able people say them, on personal authority, that is, 
as intelligent listeners very commonly did a century 
ago. The newspapers have lied that belief out of us. 
Any man who has a pretty gift of talk may hold his 
company a little while when there is nothing better 
stirring. Every now and then a man who may be 
dull enough prevailingly has a passion of talk come 
over him which makes him eloquent and silences the 
rest. I have a great respect for these divine parox¬ 
ysms, these half-inspired moments of influx when 
they seize one whom we had not counted among the 
luminaries of the social sphere. But the man who 
can give us a fresh experience on anything that in¬ 
terests us overrides everybody else. A great peril 
escaped makes a great story-teller of a common per¬ 
son enough. I remember when a certain vessel was 
wrecked long ago, that one of the survivors told the 
story as well as Defoe could have told it. Never a 
word from him before; never a word from him since. 
But when it comes to talking one’s common thoughts, 
— those that come and go as the breath does; those 
that tread the mental areas and corridors with steady, 
even foot-fall, an interminable procession of every hue 
and garb, — there are few, indeed, that can dare to 
lift the curtain which hangs before the window in the 
breast and throw open the window, and let us look 
and listen. We are all loyal enough to our sovereign 
when he shows himself, but sovereigns are scarce. I 
never saw the absolute homage of listeners but once, 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 267 

that I remember, to a man’s common talk, and that 
was to the conversation of an old man, illustrious by 
his lineage and the exalted honors he had won, whose 
experience had lessons for the wisest, and whose elo¬ 
quence had made the boldest tremble. 

All this because I told you to look out for your¬ 
selves and not take for absolute truth everything the 
old Master of our table, or anybody else at it sees fit 
to utter. At the same time I do not think that he, 
or any of us whose conversation I think worth report¬ 
ing, says anything for the mere sake of saying it and 
without thinking that it holds some truth, even if it is 
not unqualifiedly true. 

I suppose a certain number of my readers wish very 
heartily that the Young Astronomer whose poetical 
speculations I am recording would stop trying by 
searching to find out the Almighty, and sign the 
thirty-nine articles, or the Westminster Confession 
of Faith, at any rate slip his neck into some collar 
or other, and pull quietly in the harness, whether it 
galled him or not. I say, rather, let him have his 
talk out; if nobody else asks the questions he asks, 
some will be glad to hear them, but if you, the reader, 
find the same questions in your own mind, you need 
not be afraid to see how they shape themselves in an¬ 
other’s intelligence. Do you recognize the fact that 
we are living in a new time ? Knowledge — it excites 
prejudices to call it science — is advancing as irresist¬ 
ibly, as majestically, as remorselessly as the ocean 
moves in upon the shore. The courtiers of King 
Canute (I am not afraid of the old comparison), rep¬ 
resented by the adherents of the traditional beliefs of 
the period, move his chair back an inch at a time, but 


268 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

not until his feet are pretty damp, not to say wet. 
The rock on which he sat securely awhile ago is com¬ 
pletely under water. And now people are walking 
up and down the beach and judging for themselves 
how far inland the chair of King Canute is like to be 
moved while they and their children are looking on, at 
the rate in which it is edging backward. And it is 
quite too late to go into hysterics about it. 

The shore, solid, substantial, a great deal more 
than eighteen hundred years old, is natural humanity. 
The beach which the ocean of knowledge — you may 
call it science if you like — is flowing over, is theolo¬ 
gical humanity. Somewhere between the Sermon on 
the Mount and the teachings of Saint Augustine sin 
was made a transferable chattel. (I leave the inter¬ 
val wide for others to make narrow.) 

The doctrine of heritable guilt, with its mechanical 
consequences, has done for our moral nature what the 
doctrine of demoniac possession has done in barbarous 
times and still does among barbarous tribes for disease. 
Out of that black cloud c^me the lightning which 
struck the compass of humanity. Conscience, which 
from the dawn of moral being had pointed to the poles 
of right and wrong only as the great current of will 
flowed through the soul, was demagnetized, paralyzed, 
and knew henceforth no fixed meridian, but stayed 
where the priest or the council placed it. There is 
nothing to be done but to polarize the needle over 
again. And for this purpose we must study the lines 
of direction of all the forces which traverse our human 
nature. 

We must study man as we have studied stars and 
rocks. We need not go, we are told, to our sacred 
books for astronomy or geology or other scientific 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 269 


knowledge. Do not stop there! Pull Canute’s chair 
back fifty rods at once, and do not wait until he is 
wet to the knees! Say now, bravely, as you will 
sooner or later have to say, that we need not go to any 
ancient records for our anthropology. Do we not all 
hope , at least, that the doctrine of man’s being a 
blighted abortion, a miserable disappointment to his 
Creator, and hostile and hateful to him from his 
birth, may give way to the belief that he is the latest 
terrestrial manifestation of an ever upward-striving 
movement of divine power ? If there lives a man who 
does not want to disbelieve the popular notions about 
the condition and destiny of the bulk of his race, I 
should like to have him look me in the face and tell 
me so. 

I am not writing for the basement story or the nur¬ 
sery, and I do not pretend to be, but I say nothing in 
these pages which would not be said without fear of 
offence in any intelligent circle, such as clergymen of 
the higher castes are in the habit of frequenting. 
There are teachers in type for our grandmothers and 
our grandchildren who vaccinate the two childhoods 
with wholesome doctrine, transmitted harmlessly from 
one infant to another. But we three men at our table 
have taken the disease of thinking in the natural way. 
It is an epidemic in these times, and those who are 
afraid of it must shut themselves up close or they will 
catch it. 

I hope none of us are wanting in reverence. One 
at least of us is a regular church-goer, and believes a 
man may be devout and yet very free in the expres¬ 
sion of his opinions on the gravest subjects. There 
may be some good people who think that our young 
friend who puts his thoughts in verse is going sound- 


270 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ing over perilous depths, and are frightened every 
time he throws the lead. There is nothing to he 
frightened at. This is a manly world we live in. 
Our reverence is good for nothing if it does not begin, 
with self-respect. Occidental manhood springs from 
that as its basis; Oriental manhood finds the greatest 
satisfaction in self-abasement. There is no use in try¬ 
ing to graft the tropical palm upon the Northern pine. 
The same divine forces underlie the growth of both, 
but leaf and flower and fruit must follow the law of 
race, of soil, of climate. Whether the questions 
which assail my young friend have risen in my read¬ 
er’s mind or not, he knows perfectly well that no¬ 
body can keep such questions from springing up in 
every young mind of any force or honesty. As for 
the excellent little wretches who grow up in what they 
are taught, with never a scruple or a query, Prot¬ 
estant or Catholic, Jew or Mormon, Mahometan or 
Buddhist, they signify nothing in the intellectual life 
of the race. If the world had been wholly peopled 
with such half-vitalized mental negatives, there never 
would have been a creed like that of Christendom. 

I entirely agree with the spirit of the verses I have 
looked over, in this point at least, that a true man’s 
allegiance is given to that which is highest in his own 
nature. He reverences truth, he loves kindness, he 
respects justice. The two first qualities he under¬ 
stands well enough. But the last, justice, at least as 
between the Infinite and the finite, has been so ut¬ 
terly dehumanized, disintegrated, decomposed, and 
diabolized in passing through the minds of the half- 
civilized banditti who have peopled and unpeopled the 
world for some scores of generations, that it has 
become a mere algebraic sc, and has no fixed value 
whatever as a human conception. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 271 

As for power , we are outgrowing all superstition 
about that. We have not the slightest respect for it 
as such, and it is just as well to remember this in all 
our spiritual adjustments. We fear power when we 
cannot master it; but just as far as we can master it, 
we make a slave and a beast of burden of it without 
hesitation. We cannot change the ebb and flow of 
the tides, or the course of the seasons, but we come as 
near it as we can. We dam out the ocean, we make 
roses blow in winter and water freeze in summer. 
We have no more reverence for the sun than we have 
for a fish-tail gas-burner; we stare into his face with 
telescopes as at a ballet-dancer with opera-glasses; we 
pick his rays to pieces with prisms as if they were so 
many skeins of colored yarn; we tell him we do not 
want his company and shut him out like a troublesome 
vagrant. The gods of the old heathen are the servants 
of to-day. Neptune, Vulcan, Aeolus, and the bearer 
of the thunderbolt himself have stepped down from 
their pedestals and put on our livery. We cannot 
always master them, neither can we always master 
our servant, the horse, but we have put a bridle on 
the wildest natural agencies. The mob of elemental 
forces is as noisy and turbulent as ever, but the stand¬ 
ing army of civilization keeps it well under, except 
for an occasional outbreak. 

When I read the Lady’s letter printed some time 
since, I could not help honoring the feeling which 
prompted her in writing it. But while I respect the 
innocent incapacity of tender age and the limitations 
of the comparatively uninstructed classes, it is quite 
out of the question to act as if matters of common 
intelligence and universal interest were the private 
property of a secret society, only to be meddled with 
by those who know the grip and the password. 


272 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

We must get over the habit of transferring the lim¬ 
itations of the nervous temperament and of hectic 
constitutions to the great Source of all the mighty 
forces of nature, animate and inanimate. We may 
confidently trust that we have over us a Being thor¬ 
oughly robust and grandly magnanimous, in distinc¬ 
tion from the Infinite Invalid bred in the studies of 
sickly monomaniacs, who corresponds to a very com¬ 
mon human type, but makes us blush for him when 
we contrast him with a truly noble man, such as most 
of us have had the privilege of knowing both in pub¬ 
lic and in private life. 

I was not a little pleased to find that the Lady, in 
spite of her letter, sat through the young man’s read¬ 
ing of portions of his poem with a good deal of com¬ 
placency. I think I can guess what is in her mind. 
She believes, as so many women do, in that great 
remedy for discontent, and doubts about humanity, 
and questionings of Providence, and all sorts of youth¬ 
ful vagaries,—I mean the love-cure. And she thinks, 
not without some reason, that these astronomical les¬ 
sons, and these readings of poetry and daily proximity 
at the table, and the need of two young hearts that 
have been long feeling lonely, and youth and nature 
and “all impulses of soul and sense,” as Coleridge 
has it, will bring these two young people into closer 
relations than they perhaps have yet thought of; and 
so that sweet lesson of loving the neighbor whom he 
has seen may lead him into deeper and more trusting 
communion with the Friend and Father whom he has 
not seen. 

The Young Girl evidently did not intend that her 
accomplice should be a loser by the summary act of 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 273 

the Member of the Haouse. I took occasion to ask 
That Boy what had become of all the popguns. He 
gave me to understand that popguns were played out, 
but that he had got a squirt and a whip, and consid¬ 
ered himself better off than before. 

This great world is full of mysteries. I can com¬ 
prehend the pleasure to be got out of the hydraulic 
engine; but what can be the fascination of a whip, when 
one has nothing to flagellate but the calves of his own 
legs, I could never understand. Yet a small riding- 
whip is the most popular article with the miscellaneous 
New-Englander at all great gatherings, — cattle-shows 
and Fourth-of-July celebrations. If Democritus and 
Heraclitus could walk arm in arm through one of 
these crowds, the first would be in a broad laugh 
to see the multitude of young persons who were re¬ 
joicing in the possession of one of these useless and 
worthless little commodities; happy himself to see how 
easily others could purchase happiness. But the sec¬ 
ond would weep bitter tears to think what a rayless 
and barren life that must be which could extract en¬ 
joyment from the miserable flimsy wand that has such 
magic attraction for sauntering youths and simpering 
maidens. What a dynamometer of happiness are 
these paltry toys, and what a rudimentary vertebrate 
must be the freckled adolescent whose yearning for 
the infinite can be stayed even for a single hour by 
so trifling a boon from the venal hands of the finite! 

Pardon these polysyllabic reflections, Beloved, but 
I never contemplate these dear fellow-creatures of ours 
without a delicious sense of superiority to them and to 
all arrested embryos of intelligence, in which I have 
no doubt you heartily sympathize with me. It is not 
merely when I look at the vacuous countenances of the 


274 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

mastigophori , the whip-holders, that I enjoy this lux¬ 
ury (though I would not miss that holiday spectacle 
for a pretty sum of money, and advise you by all 
means to make sure of it next Fourth of July, if you 
missed it this), but I get the same pleasure from many 
similar manifestations. 

I delight in Regalia, so called, of the kind not 
worn by kings, nor obtaining their diamonds from 
the mines of Golconda. I have a passion for those 
resplendent titles which are not conferred by a sover¬ 
eign and would not be the open sesame to the courts 
of royalty, yet which are as opulent in impressive 
adjectives as any Knight of the Garter’s list of digni¬ 
ties. When I have recognized in the every-day name 
of His Yery Worthy High Eminence of some cabalis¬ 
tic association, the inconspicuous individual whose 
trifling indebtedness to me for value received remains 
in a quiescent state and is likely long to continue so, 
I confess to having experienced a thrill of pleasure. 
I have smiled to think how grand his magnificent 
titular appendages sounded in his own ears and what 
a feeble tintinnabulation they made in mine. The 
crimson sash, the broad diagonal belt of the mounted 
marshal of a great procession, so cheap in themselves, 
yet so entirely satisfactory to the wearer, tickle my 
heart’s root. 

Perhaps I should have enjoyed all these weaknesses 
of my infantile fellow-creatures without an after¬ 
thought, except that on a certain literary anniversary 
when I tie the narrow blue and pink ribbons in my 
button-hole and show my decorated bosom to the ad¬ 
miring public, I am conscious of a certain sense of 
distinction and superiority in virtue of that trifling 
addition to my personal adornments which reminds me 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 275 

that I too have some embryonic fibres in my tolerably 
well-matured organism. 

I hope I have not hurt your feelings, if you happen 
to be a High and Mighty Grand Functionary in any 
illustrious Fraternity. When I tell you that a bit of 
ribbon in my button-hole sets my vanity prancing, I 
think you cannot be grievously offended that I smile 
at the resonant titles which make you something more 
than human in your own eyes. I would not for the 
world be mistaken for one of those literary roughs 
whose brass knuckles leave their mark on the fore¬ 
heads of so many inoffensive people. 

There is a human sub-species characterized by the 
coarseness of its fibre and the acrid nature of its intel¬ 
lectual secretions. It is to a certain extent penetra¬ 
tive, as all creatures are which are provided with 
stings. It has an instinct which guides it to the 
vulnerable parts of the victim on which it fastens. 
These two qualities give it a certain degree of power 
which is not to be despised. It might perhaps be less 
mischievous, but for the fact that the wound where it 
leaves its poison opens the fountain from which it 
draws its nourishment. 

Beings of this kind can be useful if they will only 
find their appropriate sphere, which is not literature, 
but that circle of rough-and-tumble political life where 
the fine-fibred men are at a discount, where epithets 
find their subjects poison-proof, and the sting which 
would be fatal to a literary debutant only wakes the 
eloquence of the pachydermatous ward-room politician 
to a fiercer shriek of declamation. 

The Master got talking the other day about the dif¬ 
ference between races and families. I am reminded 
of what he said by what I have just been saying my¬ 
self about coarse-fibred and fine-fibred people. 


276 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— We talk about a Yankee, a New-Englander,— 
he said, — as if all of ’em were just the same kind of 
animal. “There is knowledge and knowledge,” said 
John Bunyan. There are Yankees and Yankees. 
Do you know two native trees called pitch pine and 
white pine respectively? Of course you know ’em. 
Well, there are pitch-pine Yankees and white-pine 
Yankees. We don’t talk about the inherited differ¬ 
ences of men quite as freely, perhaps, as they do in 
the Old World, but republicanism doesn’t alter the 
laws of physiology. We have a native aristocracy, a 
superior race, just as plainly marked by nature as of 
a higher and finer grade than the common run of peo¬ 
ple as the white pine is marked in its form, its stature, 
its bark, its delicate foliage, as belonging to the no¬ 
bility of the forest; and the pitch pine, stubbed, 
rough, coarse-haired, as of the plebeian order. Only 
the strange thing is to see in what a capricious way 
our natural nobility is distributed. The last born 
nobleman I have seen, I saw this morning; he was 
pulling a rope that was fastened to a Maine schooner 
loaded with lumber. I should say he was about 
twenty years old, as fine a figure of a young man as 
you would ask to see, and with a regular Greek out¬ 
line of countenance, waving hair, that fell as if a 
sculptor had massed it to copy, and a complexion as 
rich as a red sunset. I have a notion that the State 
of Maine breeds the natural nobility in a larger pro¬ 
portion than some other States, but they spring up in 
all sorts of out-of-the-way places. The young fellow I 
saw this morning had on an old flannel shirt, a pair of 
trowsers that meant hard work, and a cheap cloth cap 
pushed back on his head so as to let the large waves 
of hair straggle out over his forehead; he was tugging 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 277 


at his rope with the other sailors, hut upon my word I 
don’t think I have seen a young English nobleman of 
all those whom I have looked upon that answered to 
the notion of “blood” so well as this young fellow 
did. I suppose if I made such a levelling confession 
as this in public, people would think I was looking 
towards being the labor-reform candidate for Presi¬ 
dent. But I should go on and spoil my prospects by 
saying that I don’t think the white-pine Yankee is the 
more generally prevailing growth, but rather the 
pitch-pine Yankee. 

— The Member of the Haouse seemed to have been 
getting a dim idea that all this was not exactly flatter¬ 
ing to the huckleberry districts. His features betrayed 
the growth of this suspicion so clearly that the Master 
replied to his look as if it had been a remark. [I 
need hardly say that this particular member of the 
General Court was a pitch-pine Yankee of the most 
thoroughly characterized aspect and flavor.] 

— Yes, Sir,—the Master continued,—Sir being 
anybody that listened, — there is neither flattery nor 
offence in the views which a physiological observer 
takes of the forms of life around him. It won’t do to 
draw individual portraits, but the differences of nat¬ 
ural groups of human beings are as proper subjects of 
remark as those of different breeds of horses, and if 
horses were Houyhnhnms I don’t think they would 
quarrel with us because we made a distinction between 
a “Morgan ” and a “Messenger.” The truth is, Sir, 
the lean sandy soil and the droughts and the long 
winters and the east-winds and the cold storms, and 
all sorts of unknown local influences that we can’t 
make out quite so plainly as these, have a tendency 
to roughen the human organization and make it coarse, 


278 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

something as it is with the tree I mentioned. Some 
spots and some strains of blood fight against these 
influences, but if I should say right out what I think, 
it would be that the finest human fruit, on the whole, 
and especially the finest women that we get in New 
England are raised under glass. 

— Good gracious! — exclaimed the Landlady, — 
under glass! — 

— Give me cowcumbers raised in the open air, —- 
said the Capitalist, who was a little hard of hearing. 

— Perhaps, — I remarked, — it might be as well 
if you would explain this last expression of yours. 
Raising human beings under glass I take to be a met¬ 
aphorical rather than a literal statement of your 
meaning. — 

— No, Sir! — replied the Master, with energy, — I 
mean just what I say, Sir. Under glass, and with a 
south exposure. During the hard season, of course, 
— for in the heats of summer the tenderest hot-house 
plants are not afraid of the open air. Protection is 
what the transplanted Aryan requires in this New 
England climate. Keep him, and especially keep 
Aer, in a wide street of a well-built city eight months 
of the year; good solid brick walls behind her, good 
sheets of plate-glass, with the sun shining warm 
through them, in front of her, and you have put her 
in the condition of the pine-apple, from the land of 
which, and not from that of the other kind of pine, 
her race started on its travels. People don’t know 
what a gain there is to health by living in cities, the 
best parts of them of course, for we know too well 
what the worst parts are. In the first place you get 
rid of the noxious emanations which poison so many 
country localities with typhoid fever and dysentery; 


THE POET AT THE BEEAKEAST-TABLE. 279 


not wholly rid of them, of course, hut to a surprising 
degree. Let me tell you a doctor’s story. I was 
visiting a Western city a good many years ago; it was 
in the autumn, the time when all sorts of malarious 
diseases are about. The doctor I was speaking of 
took me to see the cemetery just outside the town, — 
I don’t know how much he had done to fill it, for he 
didn’t tell me, but I ’ll tell you what he did say. 

“Look round,” said the doctor. “There isn’t a 
house in all the ten-mile circuit of country you can see 
over, where there is n’t one person, at least, shaking 
with fever and ague. And yet you needn’t be afraid 
of carrying it away with you, for as long as your 
home is on a paved street you are safe.” 

— I think it likely — the Master went on to say — 
that my friend the doctor put it pretty strongly, but 
there is no doubt at all that while all the country 
round was suffering from intermittent fever, the paved 
part of the city was comparatively exempted. What 
do you do when you build a house on a damp soil, — 
and there are damp soils pretty much everywhere? 
Why you floor the cellar with cement, don’t you? 
Well, the soil of a city is cemented all over, one may 
say, with certain qualifications of course. A first- 
rate city house is a regular sanatorium . The only 
trouble is, that the little good-for-nothings that come 
of utterly used-up and worn-out stock, and ought to 
die, can’t die, to save their lives. So they grow up 
to dilute the vigor of the race with skim-milk vitality. 
They would have died, like good children, in most 
average country places; but eight months of shelter in 
a regulated temperature, in a well-sunned house, in a 
duly moistened air, with good sidewalks to go about 
on in all weather, and four months of the cream of 


280 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

summer and the fresh milk of Jersey cows, make the 
little sham organizations — the worm-eaten wind-falls, 
for that’s what they look like — hang on to the 
boughs of lifelike “froze-n-thawsregular struld- 
brugs they come to be, a good many of ’em. 

— The Scarabee’s ear was caught by that queer word 
of Swift’s, and he asked very innocently what kind of 
bugs he was speaking of, whereupon That Boy shouted 
out, Straddlebugs! to his own immense amusement 
and the great bewilderment of the Scarabee, who only 
saw that there was one of those unintelligible breaks 
in the conversation which made other people laugh, 
and drew back his antennae as usual, perplexed, but 
not amused. 

I do not believe the Master had said all he was 
going to say on this subject, and of course all these 
statements of his are more or less one-sided. But 
that some invalids do much better in cities than in the 
country is indisputable, and that the frightful dysen¬ 
teries and fevers which have raged like pestilences in 
many of our country towns are almost unknown in the 
better built sections of some of our large cities is get¬ 
ting to be more generally understood since our well- 
to-do people have annually emigrated in such numbers 
from the cemented surface of the city to the steaming 
soil of some of hhe dangerous rural districts. If one 
should contrast the healthiest country residences with 
the worst city ones the result would be all the other 
way, of course, so that there are two sides to the ques¬ 
tion, which we must let the doctors pound in their 
great mortar, infuse and strain, hoping that they will 
present us with the clear solution when they have got 
through these processes. One of our chief wants is a 
complete sanitary map of every State in the Union. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 281 

The balance of our table, as the reader has no 
doubt observed, has been deranged by the withdrawal 
of the Man of Letters, so called, and only the side of 
the deficiency changed by the removal of the Young 
Astronomer into our neighborhood. The fact that 
there was a vacant ohair on the side opposite us had 
by no means escaped the notice of That Boy. He 
had taken advantage of his opportunity and invited 
in a schoolmate whom he evidently looked upon as a 
great personage. This boy or youth was a good deal 
older than himself and stood to him apparently in the 
light of a patron and instructor in the ways of life. 
A very jaunty, knowing young gentleman he was, 
good-looking, smartly dressed, smooth-cheeked as yet, 
curly-haired, with a roguish eye, a sagacious wink, a 
ready tongue, as I soon found out; and as I learned 
could catch a ball on the fly with any boy of his age; 
not quarrelsome, but, if he had to strike, hit from the 
shoulder; the pride of his father (who was a man of 
property and a civic dignitary), and answering to the 
name of Johnny. 

I was a little surprised at the liberty That Boy had 
taken in introducing an extra peptic element at our 
table, reflecting as I did that a certain number of 
avoirdupois ounces of nutriment which the visitor 
would dispose of corresponded to a very appreciable 
pecuniary amount, so that he was levying a contribu¬ 
tion upon our Landlady which she might be inclined 
to complain of. For the Caput mortuum (or dead¬ 
head, in vulgar phrase) is apt to be furnished with a 
Venter vivus, or, as we may say, a lively appetite. 
But the Landlady welcomed the new-comer very 
heartily. 

— Why! how — do — you — do — Johnny ?! with 


282 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the notes of interrogation and of admiration both to¬ 
gether, as here represented. 

Johnny signified that he was doing about as well 
as could be expected under the circumstances, having 
just had a little difference with a young person whom 
he spoke of as “Pewter-jaw” (I suppose he had worn 
a dentist’s tooth-straightening contrivance during his 
second dentition), which youth he had finished off, as 
he said, in good shape, but at the expense of a slight — 
epistaxis, we will translate his vernacular expression. 

— The three ladies all looked sympathetic, but 
there did not seem to be any great occasion for it, as 
the boy had come out all right, and seemed to be in 
the best of spirits. 

— And how is your father and your mother? — 
asked the Landlady. 

— Oh, the Governor and the Head Centre? A 1, 
both of ’em. Prime order for shipping, — warranted 
to stand any climate. The Governor says he weighs 
a hunderd and seventy-five pounds. Got a chin-tuft 
just like Ed’in Forrest. D’d y’ ever see Ed’in For¬ 
rest play Metamora? Bully, I tell you! My old 
gentleman means to be Mayor or Governor or Presi¬ 
dent or something or other before he goes off the 
handle, you’d better b’lieve. He ’s smart,—and 
I’ve heard folks say I take after him. — 

— Somehow or other I felt as if I had seen this 
boy before, or known something about him. Where 
did he get those expressions “A 1 ”and “prime” and 
so on? They must have come from somebody who 
has been in the retail dry-goods business, or something 
of that nature. I have certain vague reminiscences 
that carry me back to the early times of this boarding¬ 
house. — Johnny. —Landlady knows his father well. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 283 


— Boarded with her, no doubt. — There was some¬ 
body by the name of John, I remember perfectly well, 
lived with her. I remember both my friends men¬ 
tioned him, one of them very often. I wonder if this 
boy is n’t a son of his! I asked the Landlady after 
breakfast whether this was not, as I had suspected, 
the son of that former boarder. 

— To be sure he is,—she answered,—and jest 
such a good-natur’d sort of creatur’ as his father was. 
I always liked John, as we used to call his father. 
He did love fun, but he was a good soul, and stood 
by me when I was in trouble, always. He went into 
business on his own account after a while, and got 
merried, and settled down into a family man. They 
tell me he is an amazing smart business man, — grown 
wealthy, and his wife’s father left her money. But I 
can’t help calling him John, —law, we never thought 
of calling him anything else, and he always laughs 
and says, “That’s right.” This is his oldest son, and 
everybody calls him Johnny. That Boy of ours goes 
to the same school with his boy, and thinks there 
never was anybody like him, — you see there was a boy 
undertook to impose on our boy, and Johnny gave the 
other boy a good licking, and ever since that he is al¬ 
ways wanting to have Johnny round with him and 
bring him here with him, — and when those two boys 
get together, there never was boys that was so chock 
full of fun and sometimes mischief, but not very bad 
mischief, as those two boys be. But I like to have 
him come once in a while when there is room at the 
table, as there is now, for it puts me in mind of the 
old times, when my old boarders was all round me, 
that I used to think so much of, — not that my board¬ 
ers that I have now a’nt very nice people, but I did 


284 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

think a dreadful sight of the gentleman that made that 
first book; it helped me on in the world more than 
ever he knew of, — for it was as good as one of them 
Brandreth’s pills advertisements, and did n’t cost me 
a cent, and that young lady he merried too, she was 
nothing but a poor young schoolma’am when she come 
to my house, and now — and she deserved it all too, 
for she was always just the same, rich or poor, and 
she is n’t a bit prouder now she wears a camel’s-hair 
shawl, than she was when I used to lend her a woollen 
one to keep her poor dear little shoulders warm when 
she had to go out and it was storming, — and then 
there was that old gentleman, —I can’t speak about 
him, for I never knew how good he was till his will 
was opened, and then it was too late to thank 
him. . . . 

I respected the feeling which caused the interval of 
silence, and found my own eyes moistened as I re¬ 
membered how long it was since that friend of ours 
was sitting in the chair where I now sit, and what a 
tidal wave of change has swept over the world and 
more especially over this great land of ours, since he 
opened his lips and found so many kind listeners. 

The Young Astronomer has read us another extract 
from his manuscript. I ran my eye over it, and so 
far as I have noticed it is correct enough in its versifi¬ 
cation. I suppose we are getting gradually over our 
hemispherical provincialism, which allowed a set of 
monks to pull their hoods over our eyes and tell us 
there was no meaning in any religious symbolism but 
our own. If I am mistaken about this advance I 
am very glad to print the young man’s somewhat out¬ 
spoken lines to help us in that direction. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS. 

VI. 

The time is racked with birth-pangs ; every hour 
Brings forth some gasping truth, and truth new-bom 
Looks a misshapen and untimely growth, 

The terror of the household and its shame, 

A monster coiling in its nurse’s lap 

That some would strangle, some would only starve ; 

But still it breathes, and passed from hand to hand, 
And suckled at a hundred half-clad breasts, 

Comes slowly to its stature and its form, 

Calms the rough ridges of its dragon-scales, 

Changes to shining locks its snaky hair, 

And moves transfigured into angel guise, 

Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth, 

And folded in the same encircling arms 
That cast it like a serpent from their hold ! 

If thou wouldst live in honor, die in peace, 

Have the fine words the marble-workers learn 
To carve so well, upon thy funeral-stone, 

And earn a fair obituary, dressed 
In all the many-colored robes of praise, 

Be deafer than the adder to the cry 

Of that same foundling truth, until it grows 

To seemly favor, and at length has won 

The smiles of hard-mouthed men and light-lipped dames 

Then snatch it from its meagre nurse’s breast, 

Fold it in silk and give it food from gold ; 

So shalt thou share its glory when at last 
It drops its mortal vesture, and revealed 
In all the splendor of its heavenly form, 

Spreads on the startled air its mighty wings! 

Alas ! how much that seemed immortal truth 
That heroes fought for, martyrs died to save, 

Reveals its earth-born lineage, growing old 
And limping in its march, its wings unplumed. 

Its heavenly semblance faded like a dream ! 


286 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


Here in this painted casket, just unsealed, 

Lies what was once a breathing shape like thine, 

Once loved as thou art loved ; there beamed the eyes 
That looked on Memphis in its hour of pride, 

That saw the walls of hundred-gated Thebes, 

And all the mirrored glories of the Nile. 

See how they toiled that all-consuming time 
Might leave the frame immortal in its tomb; 

Filled it with fragrant balms and odorous gums 
That still diffuse their sweetness through the air, 

And wound and wound with patient fold on fold 
The flaxen bands thy hand has rudely torn ! 
Perchance thou yet canst see the faded stain 
Of the sad mourner’s tear. 

But what is this ? 

The sacred beetle, bound upon the breast 
Of the blind heathen ! Snatch the curious prize, 

Give it a place among thy treasured spoils 
Fossil and relic, — corals, encrinites, 

The fly in amber and the fish in stone, 

The twisted circlet of Etruscan gold, 

Medal, intaglio, poniard, poison-ring, — 

Place for the Memphian beetle with thine hoard! 

Ah ! longer than thy creed has blest the world 
This toy, thus ravished from thy brother’s breast, 
Was to the heart of Mizraim as divine, 

As holy, as the symbol that we lay 

On the still bosom of our white-robed dead, 

And raise above their dust that all may know 
Here sleeps an heir of glory. Loving friends, 

With tears of trembling faith and choking sobs, 

And prayers to those who judge of mortal deeds, 
Wrapped this poor image in the cerement’s fold 
That Isis and Osiris, friends of man, 

Might know their own and claim the ransomed soul. 

An idol ? Man was born to worship such ! 

An idol is an image of his thought ; 

Sometimes he carves it out of gleaming stone, 

And sometimes moulds it out of glittering gold. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Or rounds it in a mighty frescoed dome, 

Or lifts it heavenward in a lofty spire, 

Or shapes it in a cunning frame of words. 

Or pays his priest to make it day by day; 

For sense must have its god as well as soul; 

A new-born Dian calls for silver shrines, 

And Egypt’s holiest symbol is our own, 

The sign we worship as did they of old 
When Isis and Osiris ruled the world. 

Let us be true to our most subtle selves, 

We long to have our idols like the rest. 

Think ! when the men of Israel had their God 
Encamped among them, talking with their chief, 
Leading them in the pillar of the cloud 
And watching o’er them in the shaft of fire, 

They still must have an image ; still they longed 
For somewhat of substantial, solid form 
Whereon to hang their garlands, and to fix 
Their wandering thoughts, and gain a stronger hold 
For their uncertain faith, not yet assured 
If those same meteors of the day and night 
Were not mere exhalations of the soil. 

Are we less earthly than the chosen race ? 

Are we more neighbors of the living God 
Than they who gathered manna every morn, 
Reaping where none had sown, and heard the voice 
Of him who met the Highest in the mount, 

And brought them tables, graven with His hand ? 
Yet these must have their idol, brought their gold, 
That star-browed Apis might be god again ; 

Yea, from their ears the women brake the rings 
That lent such splendors to the gypsy brown 
Of sunburnt cheeks, — what more could woman do 
To show her pious zeal ? They went astray, 

But nature led them as it leads us all. 

We too, who mock at Israel’s golden calf 
And scoff at Egypt’s sacred scarabee, 

Would have our amulets to clasp and kiss, 

And flood with rapturous tears, and bear with us 
To be our dear companions in the dust, 

Such magic works an image in our souls ! 


287 


288 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


Man is an embryo ; see at twenty years 
His bones, the columns that uphold his frame 
Not yet cemented, shaft and capital, 

Mere fragments of the temple incomplete. 

At twoscore, threescore, is he then full grown ? 

Nay, still a child, and as the little maids 
Dress and undress their puppets, so he tries 
To dress a lifeless creed, as if it lived, 

And change its raiment when the world cries shame f 
We smile to see our little ones at play 
So grave, so thoughtful, with maternal care 
Nursing the wisps of rags they call their babes ; — 

Does He not smile who sees us with the toys 
We call by sacred names, and idly feign 
To be what we have called them ? He is still 
The Father of this helpless nursery-brood, 

Whose second childhood joins so close its first, 

That in the crowding, hurrying years between 
We scarce have trained our senses to their task 
Before the gathering mist has dimmed our eyes, 

And with our hollowed palm we help our ear, 

And trace with trembling hand our wrinkled names, 

And then begin to tell our stories o’er, 

And see — not hear — the whispering lips that say, 

“ You know-? Your father knew him. — This is he. 

Tottering and leaning on the hireling’s arm,” — 

And so, at length, disrobed of all that clad 
The simple life we share with weed and worm, 

Go to our cradles, naked as we came. 


XI. 

I suppose there would have been even more remarks 
upon the growing intimacy of the Young Astronomer 
and his pupil, if the curiosity of the boarders had not 
in the mean time been so much excited at the appar¬ 
ently close relation which had sprung up between the 
Kegister of Deeds and the Lady. It was really hard 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 289 


to tell what to make of it. The Register appeared at 
the table in a new coat. Suspicious. The Lady was 
evidently deeply interested in him, if we could judge 
by the frequency and the length of their interviews. 
On at least one occasion he has brought a lawyer with 
him, which naturally suggested the idea that there 
were some property arrangements to be attended to, 
in case, as seems probable against all reasons to the 
contrary, these two estimable persons, so utterly un¬ 
fitted, as one would say, to each other, contemplated 
an alliance. It is no pleasure to me to record an ar¬ 
rangement of this kind. I frankly confess I do not 
know what to make of it. With her tastes and breed¬ 
ing, it is the last thing that I should have thought of, 
— her uniting herself with this most commonplace 
and mechanical person, who cannot even offer her the 
elegances and luxuries to which she might seem enti¬ 
tled on changing her condition. 

While I was thus interested and puzzled I received 
an unexpected visit from our Landlady. She was 
evidently excited, and by some event which was of a 
happy nature, for her countenance was beaming and 
she seemed impatient to communicate what she had 
to tell. Impatient or not, she must wait a moment, 
while I say a word about her. Our Landlady is as 
good a creature as ever lived. She is a little negli¬ 
gent of grammar at times, and will get a wrong word 
now and then; she is garrulous, circumstantial, asso¬ 
ciates facts by their accidental cohesion rather than by 
their vital affinities, is given to choking and tears on 
slight occasions, but she has a warm heart, and feels to 
her boarders as if they were her blood-relations. 

She began her conversation abruptly. — I expect 
I’m a going to lose one of my boarders, — she said. 


290 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— You don’t seem very unhappy about it, madam, 

.— I answered. —We all took it easily when the per¬ 
son who sat on our side of the table quitted us in such 
a hurry, but I do not think there is anybody left that 
either you or the boarders want to get rid of — unless 
it is myself, —I added modestly. 

— You! said the Landlady — you! No indeed. 
When I have a quiet boarder that ’s a small eater, I 
don’t want to lose him. You don’t make trouble, you 
don’t find fault with your vit — [Dr. Benjamin had 
schooled his parent on this point and she altered the 
word] with your food, and you know when you’ve 
had enough. 

— I really felt proud of this eulogy, which embraces 
the most desirable excellences of a human being in the 
capacity of boarder. 

The Landlady began again. — I’m going to lose — 
at least, I suppose I shall — one of the best boarders 
I ever had, —that Lady that’s been with me so long. 

— I thought there was something going on between 
her and the Register, — I said. 

— Something! I should think there was! About 
three months ago he began making her acquaintance. 
I thought there was something particular. I did n’t 
quite like to watch ’em very close, but I could n’t help 
overhearing some of the things he said to her, for, 
you see, he used to follow her up into the parlor, —■ 
they talked pretty low, but I could catch a word now 
and then. I heard him say something to her one day 
about “bettering her condition,” and she seemed to be 
thinking very hard about it, and turning of it over in 
her mind, and I said to myself, She does n’t want to 
take up with him, but she feels dreadful poor, and 
perhaps he has been saving and has got money in the 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 291 

bank, and she does n’t want to throw away a chance of 
bettering- herself without thinking it over. But dear 
me » — says I to myself, — to think of her walking up 
the broad aisle into meeting alongside of such a 
homely, rusty-looking creatur’ as that! But there’s 
no telling what folks will do when poverty has got 
hold of ’em. 

— Well, so I thought she was waiting to make up 
her mind, and he was hanging on in hopes she’d come 
romid at last, as women do half the time, for they 
don’t know their own minds and the wind blows both 
ways at once with ’em as the smoke blows out of the 
tall chimlies, — east out of this one and west out of 
that, — so it’s no use looking at ’em to know what 
the weather is. 

— But yesterday she comes up to me after break¬ 
fast, and asks me to go up with her into her little 
room. Now, says I to myself, I shall hear all about 
it. I saw she looked as if she’d got some of her 
trouble off her mind, and I guessed that it was set¬ 
tled, and so, says I to myself, I must wish her joy and 
hope it’s all for the best, whatever I think about it. 

— Well, she asked me to set down, and then she 
begun. She said that she was expecting to have a 
change in her condition of life, and had asked me 
up so that I might have the first news of it. I am 
sure — says I — I wish you both joy. Merriage is 
a blessed thing when folks is well sorted, and it is an 
honorable thing, and the first meracle was at the mer¬ 
riage in Canaan. It brings a great sight of happiness 
with it, as I ’ve had a chance of knowing, for my — 
hus — 

The Landlady showed her usual tendency to 
“break” from the conversational pace just at this 


292 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

point, but managed to rein in the rebellious dia¬ 
phragm, and resumed her narrative. 

— Merriage! — says she, — pray who has said any¬ 
thing about merriage ? — 

— I beg your pardon, ma’am,—says I,—I 
thought you had spoke of changing your condition, 
and I — She looked so I stopped right short. 

— Don’t say another word, says she, but jest listen 
to what I am going to tell you. 

— My friend, says she, that you have seen with me 
so often lately, was hunting among his old Record 
books, when all at once he come across an old deed 
that was made by somebody that had my family name. 
He took it into his head to read it over, and he found 
there was some kind of a condition that if it was n’t 
kept, the property would all go back to them that 
was the heirs of the one that gave the deed, and that 
he found out was me. Something or other put it into 
his head, says she, that the company that owned the 
property — it was ever so rich a company and owned 
land all round everywhere — had n’t kept to the con¬ 
ditions. So he went to work, says she, and hunted 
through his books and he inquired all round, and he 
found out pretty much all about it, and at last he 
come to me — it’s my boarder, you know, that says 
all this — and says he, Ma’am, says he, if you have 
any kind of fancy for being a rich woman you’ve 
only got to say so. I did n’t know what he meant, 
and I began to think, says she, he must be crazy. 
But he explained it all to me, how I ’d nothing to do 
but go to court and I could get a sight of property 
back. W ell, so she went on telling me — there was 
ever so much more that I suppose was all plain enough, 
but I don’t remember it all — only I know my boarder 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 293 

was a good deal worried at first at the thought of tak¬ 
ing money that other people thought was theirs, and 
the Register he had to talk to her, and he brought a 
lawyer and he talked to her, and her friends they 
talked to her, and the upshot of it all was that the 
company agreed to settle the business by paying her, 
well, I don’t know just how much, but enough to make 
her one of the rich folks again. 

I may as well add here that, as I have since learned, 
this is one of the most important cases of releasing 
right of reentry for condition broken which has been 
settled by arbitration for a considerable period. If I 
am not mistaken the Register of Deeds will get some¬ 
thing more than a new coat out of this business, for 
the Lady very justly attributes her change of fortunes 
to his sagacity and his activity in following up the 
hint he had come across by mere accident. 

So my supernumerary fellow-boarder, whom I 
would have dispensed with as a cumberer of the table, 
has proved a ministering angel to one of the personages 
whom I most cared for. 

One would have thought that the most scrupulous 
person need not have hesitated in asserting an unques¬ 
tioned legal and equitable claim simply because it had 
lain a certain number of years in abeyance. But be¬ 
fore the Lady could make up her mind to accept her 
good fortune she had been kept awake many nights in 
doubt and inward debate whether she should avail 
herself of her rights. If it had been private property, 
so that another person must be made poor that she 
should become rich, she would have lived and died in 
want rather than claim her own. I do not think any 
of us would like to turn out the possessor of a fine 


294 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

estate enjoyed for two or three generations on the 
faith of unquestioned ownership by making use of 
some old forgotten instrument, which accident had 
thrown in our way. 

But it was all nonsense to indulge in any sentiment 
in a case like this, where it was not only a right, but 
a duty which she owed herself and others in relation 
with her, to accept what Providence, as it appeared, 
had thrust upon her, and when no suffering would be 
occasioned to anybody. Common sense told her not 
to refuse it. So did several of her rich friends, who 
remembered about this time that they had not called 
upon her for a good while, and among them Mrs. 
Midas Goldenrod. 

Never had that lady’s carriage stood before the door 
of our boarding-house so long, never had it stopped so 
often, as since the revelation which had come from the 
Registry of Deeds. Mrs. Midas Goldenrod was not 
a bad woman, but she loved and hated in too exclusive 
and fastidious a way to allow us to consider her as 
representing the highest ideal of womanhood. She 
hated narrow ill-ventilated courts, where there was 
nothing to see if one looked out of the window but old 
men in dressing-gowns and old women in caps; she 
hated little dark rooms with air-tight stoves in them; 
she hated rusty bombazine gowns and last year’s bon¬ 
nets ; she hated gloves that were not as fresh as new- 
laid eggs, and shoes that had grown bulgy and wrin¬ 
kled in service; she hated common crockery-ware and 
teaspoons of slight constitution; she hated second ap¬ 
pearances on the dinner-table; she hated coarse nap¬ 
kins and table-cloths; she hated to ride in the horse- 
cars; she hated to walk except for short distances, 
when she was tired of sitting in her carriage. She 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 295 

loved with sincere and undisguised affection a spacious 
city mansion and a charming country villa, with a 
seaside cottage for a couple of months or so; she loved 
a perfectly appointed household, a cook who was up to 
all kinds of salmis and vol-au-vents, a French maid, 
and a stylish-looking coachman, and the rest of the 
people necessary to help one live in a decent manner; 
she loved pictures that other people said were first- 
rate, and which had at least cost first-rate prices; she 
loved books with handsome backs, in showy cases; she 
loved heavy and richly wought plate; fine linen and 
plenty of it; dresses from Paris frequently, and as 
many as could be got in without troubling the custom¬ 
house; Russia sables and Venetian point-lace; dia¬ 
monds, and good big ones; and, speaking generally, 
she loved dear things in distinction from cheap ones, 
the real article and not the economical substitute. 

For the life of me I cannot see anything Satanic in 
all this. Tell me, Beloved, only between ourselves, 
if some of these things are not desirable enough in 
their way, and if you and I could not make up our 
minds to put up with some of the least objectionable 
of them without any great inward struggle ? Even in 
the matter of ornaments there is something to be said. 
Why should we be told that the New Jerusalem is 
paved with gold, and that its twelve gates are each of 
them a pearl, and that its foundations are garnished 
with sapphires and emeralds and all manner of pre¬ 
cious stones, if these are not among the most desirable 
of objects? And is there anything very strange in 
the fact that many a daughter of earth finds it a sweet 
foretaste of heaven to wear about her frail earthly 
tabernacle these glittering reminders of the celestial 
city? 


296 THE POET AT THE BEE AKF A ST-TABLE. 

Mrs. Midas Goldenrod was not so entirely peculiar 
and anomalous in her likes and dislikes; the only 
trouble was that she mixed up these accidents of life 
too much with life itself, which is so often serenely or 
actively noble and happy without reference to them. 
She valued persons chiefly according to their external 
conditions, and of course the very moment her rela¬ 
tive, the Lady of our breakfast-table, began to find 
herself in a streak of sunshine she came forward with 
a lighted candle to show her which way her path lay 
before her. 

The Lady saw all this, how plainly, how painfully! 
yet she exercised a true charity for the weakness of 
her relative. Sensible people have as much consider¬ 
ation for the frailties of the rich as for those of the 
poor. There is a good deal of excuse for them. 
Even you and I, philosophers and philanthropists as 
we may think ourselves, have a dislike for the en¬ 
forced economies, proper and honorable though they 
certainly are, of those who are two or three degrees 
below us in the scale of agreeable living. 

— These are very worthy persons you have been 
living with, my dear, —said Mrs. Midas — [the u My 
dear ” was an expression which had flowered out more 
luxuriantly than ever before in the new streak of 
sunshine] — eminently respectable parties, I have no 
question, but then we shall want you to move as soon 
as possible to our quarter of the town, where we can 
see more of you than we have been able to in this 
queer place. 

It was not very pleasant to listen to this kind of 
talk, but the Lady remembered her annual bouquet, 
and her occasional visits from the rich lady, and re¬ 
strained the inclination to remind her of the humble 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 297 

sphere from which she herself, the rich and patroniz¬ 
ing personage, had worked her way up (if it was up) 
into that world which she seemed to think was the 
only one where a human being could find life worth 
having. Her cheek flushed a little, however, as she 
said to Mrs. Midas that she felt attached to the place 
where she had been living so long. She doubted, she 
was pleased to say, whether she should find better 
company in any circle she was like to move in than 
she left behind her at our boarding-house. I give the 
old Master the credit of this compliment. If one does 
not agree with half of what he says, at any rate he 
always has something to say, and entertains and lets 
out opinions and whims and notions of one kind and 
another that one can quarrel with if he is out of 
humor, or carry away to think about if he happens to 
be in the receptive mood. 

But the Lady expressed still more strongly the 
regret she should feel at leaving her young friend, our 
Scheherezade. I cannot wonder at this. The Young 
Girl has lost what little playfulness she had in the 
earlier months of my acquaintance with her. I often 
read her stories partly from my interest in her, and 
partly because I find merit enough in them to deserve 
something better than the rough handling they got 
from her coarse-fibred critic, whoever he was. I see 
evidence that her thoughts are wandering from her 
task, that she has fits of melancholy, and bursts of 
tremulous excitement, and that she has as much as she 
can do to keep herself at all to her stated, inevitable, 
and sometimes almost despairing literary labor. I 
have had some acquaintance with vital phenomena of 
this kind, and know something of the nervous nature 
of young women and its “magnetic storms,” if I may 


298 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

borrow an expression from the physicists, to indicate 
the perturbations to which they are liable. She is 
more in need of friendship and counsel now than ever 
before, it seems to me, and I cannot bear to think 
that the Lady, who has become like a mother to her, 
is to leave her to her own guidance. 

It is plain enough what is at the bottom of this dis¬ 
turbance. The astronomical lessons she has been tak¬ 
ing have become interesting enough to absorb too 
much of her thoughts, and she finds them wandering 
to the stars or elsewhere, when they should be work¬ 
ing quietly in the editor’s harness. 

The Landlady has her own views on this matter 
which she communicated to me something as fol¬ 
lows : — 

— I don’t quite like to tell folks what a lucky place 
my boarding-house is, for fear I should have all sorts 
of people crowding in to be my boarders for the sake 
of their chances. Folks come here poor and they go 
away rich. Young women come here without a 
friend in the world, and the next thing that happens 
is a gentleman steps up to ’em and says, “If you’ll 
take me for your pardner for life, I ’ll give you a 
good home and love you ever so much besides”; and 
off goes my young lady-boarder into a fine three-story 
house, as grand as the governor’s wife, with every¬ 
thing to make her comfortable, and a husband to care 
for her into the bargain. That’s the way it is with 
the young ladies that comes to board with me, ever 
since the gentleman that wrote the first book that ad¬ 
vertised my establishment (and never charged me a 
cent for it neither) merried the Schoolma’am. And 
I think — but that’s between you and me — that it’s 
going to be the same thing right over again between 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 299 

that young gentleman and this young girl here — if 
she doosn’t kill herself with writing for them news¬ 
papers,— it’s too bad they don’t pay her more for 
writing her stories, for I read one of ’em that made 
me cry so the Doctor — my Doctor Benjamin — said, 
“Ma, what makes your eyes look so? ” and wanted to 
rig a machine up and look at ’em, but I told him 
what the matter was, and that he need n’t fix up his 
peeking contrivances on my account, —anyhow she ’s 
a nice young woman as ever lived, and as industrious 
with that pen of hers as if she was at work with a 
sewing-machine,—and there ain’t much difference, 
for that matter, between sewing on shirts and writing 
on stories, — one way you work with your foot, and 
the other way you work with your fingers, but I rather 
guess there ’s more headache in the stories than there 
is in the stitches, because you don’t have to think 
quite so hard while your foot’s going as you do when 
your fingers is at work, scratch, scratch, scratch, 
scribble, scribble, scribble. 

It occurred to me that this last suggestion of the 
Landlady was worth considering by the soft-handed, 
broadcloth-clad spouters to the laboring classes, — so 
called in distinction from the idle people who only 
contrive the machinery and discover the processes and 
lay out the work and draw the charts and organize the 
various movements which keep the world going and 
make it tolerable. The organ-blower works harder 
with his muscles, for that matter, than the organ- 
player, and may perhaps be exasperated into thinking 
himself a downtrodden martyr because he does not re¬ 
ceive the same pay for his services. 

I will not pretend that it needed the Landlady’s 
sagacious guess about the Young Astronomer and his 


300 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

pupil to open my eyes to certain possibilities, if not 
probabilities, in that direction. Our Scheherezade 
kept on writing her stories according to agreement, 
so many pages for so many dollars, but some of her 
readers began to complain that they could not always 
follow her quite so well as in her earlier efforts. It 
seemed as if she must have fits of absence. In one 
instance her heroine began as a blonde and finished as 
a brunette; not in consequence of the use of any cos¬ 
metic, but through simple inadvertence. At last it 
happened in one of her stories that a prominent char¬ 
acter who had been killed in an early page, not equiv¬ 
ocally, but mortally, definitively killed, done for, and 
disposed of, reappeared as if nothing had happened 
towards the close of her narrative. Her mind was on 
something else, and she had got two stories mixed up 
and sent her manuscript without having looked it 
over. She told this mishap to the Lady, as something 
she was dreadfully ashamed of and could not possibly 
account for. It had cost her a sharp note from the 
publisher, and would be as good as a dinner to some 
half-starved Bohemian of the critical press. 

The Lady listened to all this very thoughtfully, 
looking at her with great tenderness, and said, “My 
poor child! ” Not another word then, but her silence 
meant a good deal. 

When a man holds his tongue it does not signify 
much. But when a woman dispenses with the office 
of that mighty member, when she sheathes her natural 
weapon at a trying moment, it means that she trusts 
to still more formidable enginery; to tears it may be, 
a solvent more powerful than that with which Hanni¬ 
bal softened the Alpine rocks, or to the heaving bosom, 
the sight of which has subdued so many stout natures, 


THE POET AT THE BREAKEAST-TABLE. 301 

or, it may be, to a sympathizing, quieting look which 
says “Peace, be still! ” to the winds and waves of the 
little inland ocean, in a language that means more 
than speech. 

While these matters were going on the Master and 
I had many talks on many subjects. He had found 
me a pretty good listener, for I had learned that the 
best way of getting at what was worth having from 
him was to wind him up with a question and let him 
run down all of himself. It is easy to turn a good 
talker into an insufferable bore by contradicting him, 
and putting questions for him to stumble over, — that 
is, if he is not a bore already, as “good talkers” are 
apt to be, except now and then. 

We had been discussing some knotty points one 
morning when he said all at once: 

— Come into my library with me. I want to read 
you some new passages from an interleaved copy of 
my book. You haven’t read the printed part yet. 
I gave you a copy of it, but nobody reads a book that 
is given to him. Of course not. Nobody but a fool 
expects him to. He reads a little in it here and there, 
perhaps, and he cuts all the leaves if he cares enough 
about the writer, who will be sure to call on him some 
day, and if he is left alone in his library for five min¬ 
utes will have hunted every corner of it until he has 
found the book he sent, — if it is to be found at all, 
which does n’t always happen, if there’s a penal col¬ 
ony anywhere in a garret or closet for typographical 
offenders and vagrants. 

— What do you do when you receive a book you 
don’t want, from the author? — said I. 

— Give him a good-natured adjective or two if I 


302 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

can, and thank him, and tell him I am lying under a 
sense of obligation to him. 

— That is as good an excuse for lying as almost 
any, — I said. 

— Yes, but look out for the fellows that send you 
a copy of their book to trap you into writing a book¬ 
seller’s advertisement for it. I got caught so once, 
and never heard the end of it and never shall hear it. 
— He took down an elegantly bound volume, on open¬ 
ing which appeared a flourishing and eminently flat¬ 
tering dedication to himself. — There, — said he, — 
what could I do less than acknowledge such a compli¬ 
ment in polite terms, and hope and expect the book 
would prove successful, and so forth and so forth? 
Well, I get a letter every few months from some new 
locality where the man that made that book is cover¬ 
ing the fences with his placards, asking me whether 
I wrote that letter which he keeps in stereotype and 
has kept so any time these dozen or fifteen years. 
Animus tuus oculus, as the freshmen used to say. 
If her Majesty, the Queen of England, sends you a 
copy of her “Leaves from the Journal of Our Life 
in the Highlands,” be sure you mark your letter of 
thanks for it Private ! 

We had got comfortably seated in his library in the 
mean time, and the Master had taken up his book. I 
noticed that every other page was left blank, and that 
he had written in a good deal of new matter. 

— I tell you what,—he said,—there ’s so much 
intelligence about nowadays in books and newspapers 
and talk that it ’s mighty hard to write without get¬ 
ting something or other worth listening to into your 
essay or your volume. The foolishest book is a kind 
of leaky boat on a sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 303 

will get in anyhow. Every now and then I find some¬ 
thing in my book that seems so good to me, I can’t 
help thinking it must have leaked in. I suppose other 
people discover that it came through a leak, full as 
soon as I do. You must write a book or two to find 
out how much and how little you know and have to 
say. Then you must read some notices of it by some¬ 
body that loves you and one or two by somebody that 
hates you. You ’ll find yourself a very odd piece of 
property after you’ve been through these experiences. 
They ’re trying to the constitution; I ’m always glad 
to hear that a friend is as well as can be expected 
after he ’s had a book. 

You must n’t think there are no better things in 
these pages of mine than the ones I ’m going to read 
you, but you may come across something here that I 
forgot to say when we were talking over these mat¬ 
ters. 

He began, reading from the manuscript portion of 
his book: 

— We find it hard to get and to keep any private 
property in thought. Other people are all the time 
saying the same things we are hoarding to say when 
we get ready. [He looked up from his book just here 
and said, “Don’t be afraid, I am not going to quote 
Pereant”\ One of our old boarders —the one that 
called himself “The Professor” I think it was — said 
some pretty audacious things about what he called 
“pathological piety,” as I remember, in one of his 
papers. And here comes along Mr. Galton, and 
shows in detail from religious biographies that “there 
is a frequent correlation between an unusually de¬ 
vout disposition and a weak constitution.” Neither 
of them appeared to know that John Bunyan had got 


304 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

at the same fact long before them. He tells us, “The 
more healthy the lusty man is, the more prone he is 
unto evil.” If the converse is true, no wonder that 
good people, according to Bunyan, are always in 
trouble and terror, for he says, 

“ A Christian man is never long at ease ; 

When one fright is gone, another doth him seize.” 

If invalidism and the nervous timidity which is apt 
to go with it are elements of spiritual superiority, it 
follows that pathology and toxicology should form a 
most important part of a theological education, so 
that a divine might know how to keep a parish in a 
state of chronic bad health in order that it might be 
virtuous. 

It is a great mistake to think that a man’s religion 
is going to rid him of his natural qualities. “ Bishop 
Hall ” (as you may remember to have seen quoted else¬ 
where) “prefers Nature before Grace in the Election 
of a wife, because, saith he, it will be a hard Task, 
where the Nature is peevish and froward, for Grace 
to make an entire conquest while Life lasteth.” 

“Nature” and “Grace ” have been contrasted with 
each other in a jvay not very respectful to the Di¬ 
vine omnipotence. Kings and queens reign “by the 
Grace of God,” but a sweet, docile, pious disposition, 
such as is born in some children and grows up with 
them, — that congenital gift which good Bishop Hall 
would look for in a wife,— is attributed to “Nature.” 
In fact “Nature” and “Grace,” as handled by the 
scholastics, are nothing more nor less than two hos¬ 
tile Divinities in the Pantheon of post-classical poly¬ 
theism. 

What is the secret of the profound interest which 
“Darwinism” has excited in the minds and hearts of 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 305 

more persons than dare to confess their doubts and 
hopes? It is because it restores “Nature” to its 
place as a true divine manifestation. It is that it re¬ 
moves the traditional curse from that helpless infant 
lying in its mother’s arms. It is that it lifts from the 
shoulders of man the responsibility for the fact of 
death. It is that, if it is true, woman can no longer 
be taunted with having brought down on herself the 
pangs which make her sex a martyrdom. If develop¬ 
ment upward is the general law of the race; if we 
have grown by natural evolution out of the cave-man, 
and even less human forms of life, we have everything 
to hope from the future. That the question can be 
discussed without offence shows that we are entering 
on a new era, a Revival greater than that of Letters, 
the Revival of Humanity. 

The prevalent view of “Nature” has been akin to 
that which long reigned with reference to disease. 
This used to be considered as a distinct entity apart 
from the processes of life, of which it is one of the 
manifestations. It was a kind of demon to be at¬ 
tacked with things of odious taste and smell; to be 
fumigated out of the system as the evil spirit was 
driven from the bridal-chamber in the story of Tobit. 
The Doctor of earlier days, even as I can remember 
him, used to exorcise the demon of disease with 
recipes of odor as potent as that of the angel’s diabol- 
ifuge, —the smoke from a fish’s heart and liver, duly 
burned, — “ the which smell when the evil spirit had 
smelled he fled into the uttermost parts of Egypt.” 
The very moment that disease passes into the cate¬ 
gory of vital processes, and is recognized as an occur¬ 
rence absolutely necessary, inevitable, and as one 
may say, normal under certain given conditions of 


306 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

constitution and circumstance, the medicine-man loses 
his half-miraculous endowments. The mythical ser¬ 
pent is untwined from the staff of Esculapius, which 
thenceforth becomes a useful walking-stick, and does 
not pretend to be anything more. 

Sin, like disease, is a vital process. It is a func¬ 
tion, and not an entity. It must be studied as a 
section of anthropology. No preconceived idea must 
be allowed to interfere with our investigation of the 
deranged spiritual function, any more than the old 
ideas of demoniacal possession must be allowed to in¬ 
terfere with our study of epilepsy. Spiritual pathol¬ 
ogy is a proper subject for direct observation and 
analysis, like any other subject involving a series of 
living actions. 

In these living actions everything is progressive. 
There are sudden changes of character in what is 
called “conversion” which, at first, hardly seem to 
come into line with the common laws of evolution. 
But these changes have been long preparing, and it is 
just as much in the order of nature that certain char¬ 
acters should burst all at once from the rule of evil 
propensities, as it is that the evening primrose should 
explode, as it were, into bloom with audible sound, 
as you may read in Keats’s Endymion, or observe in 
your own garden. 

There is a continual tendency in men to fence in 
themselves and a few of their neighbors who agree 
with them in their ideas, as if they were an exception 
to their race. We must not allow any creed or reli¬ 
gion whatsoever to confiscate to its own private use and 
benefit the virtues which belong to our common hu¬ 
manity. The Good Samaritan helped his wounded 
neighbor simply because he was a suffering fellow- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 307 


creature. Do you think your charitable act is more 
acceptable than the Good Samaritan’s, because you 
do it in the name of Him who made the memory of 
that kind man immortal? Do you mean that you 
would not give the cup of cold water for the sake 
simply and solely of the poor, suffering fellow-mortal, 
as willingly as you now do, professing to give it for 
the sake of Him who is not thirsty or in need of any 
help of yours? We must ask questions like this, if 
we are to claim for our common nature what belongs 
to it. 

The scientific study of man is the most difficult 
of all branches of knowledge. It requires, in the first 
place, an entire new terminology to get rid of that 
enormous load of prejudices with which every term 
applied to the malformations, the functional disturb¬ 
ances, and the organic diseases of the moral nature is 
at present burdened. Take that one word Sin , for 
instance: all those who have studied the subject from 
nature and not from books know perfectly well that a 
certain fraction of what is so called is nothing more or 
less than a symptom of hysteria; that another frac¬ 
tion is the index of a limited degree of insanity; that 
still another is the result of a congenital tendency 
which removes the act we sit in judgment upon from 
the sphere of self-determination, if not entirely, at 
least to such an extent that the subject of the ten¬ 
dency cannot be judged by any normal standard. 

To study nature without fear is possible, but with¬ 
out reproach, impossible. The man who worships in 
the temple of knowledge must carry his arms with him 
as our Puritan fathers had to do when they gathered in 
their first rude meeting-houses. It is a fearful thing 
to meddle with the ark which holds the mysteries of 


308 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


creation. I remember that when I was a child the 
tradition was whispered round among us little folks 
that if we tried to count the stars we should drop 
down dead. Nevertheless, the stars have been counted 
and the astronomer has survived. This nursery le¬ 
gend is the child’s version of those superstitions which 
would have strangled in their cradles the young sci¬ 
ences now adolescent and able to take care of them¬ 
selves, and which, no longer daring to attack these, 
are watching with hostile aspect the rapid growth of 
the comparatively new science of man. 

The real difficulty of the student of nature at this 
time is to reconcile absolute freedom and perfect fear¬ 
lessness with that respect for the past, that reverence 
for the spirit of reverence wherever we find it, that 
tenderness for the weakest fibres by which the hearts 
of our fellow-creatures hold to their religious convic¬ 
tions, which will make the transition from old belief 
to a larger light and liberty an interstitial change and 
not a violent mutilation. 

I remember once going into a little church in a 
small village some miles from a great European cap¬ 
ital. The special object of adoration in this humblest 
of places of worship was a bambino , a holy infant, 
done in wax, and covered with cheap ornaments such 
as a little girl would like to beautify her doll with. 
Many a good Protestant of the old Puritan type would 
have felt a strong impulse to seize this “ idolatrous ’* 
figure and dash it to pieces on the stone floor of the 
little church. But one must have lived awhile among 
simple-minded pious Catholics to know what this poor 
waxen image and the whole baby-house of bambinos 
mean for a humble, unlettered, unimaginative peas¬ 
antry. He will find that the true office of this eidolon 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 309 

is to fix the mind of the worshipper, and that in virtue 
of the devotional thoughts it has called forth so often 
for so many years in the mind of that poor old woman 
who is kneeling before it, it is no longer a wax doll 
for her, but has undergone a transubstantiation quite 
as real as that of the Eucharist. The moral is that 
we must not roughly smash other people’s idols be¬ 
cause we know, or think we know, that they are of 
cheap human manufacture. 

— Do you think cheap manufactures encourage idle¬ 
ness? — said I. 

The Master stared. Well he might, for I had been 
getting a little drowsy, and wishing to show that I had 
been awake and attentive, asked a question suggested 
by some words I had caught, but which showed that 
I had not been taking the slightest idea from what he 
was reading me. He stared, shook his head slowly, 
smiled good-humoredly, took off his great round spec¬ 
tacles, and shut up his book. 

— Sat prata biberunt , — he said. A sick man that 
gets talking about himself, a woman that gets talking 
about her baby, and an author that begins reading out 
of his own book, never know when to stop. You ’ll 
think of some of these things you ’ ve been getting half 
asleep over by and by. I don’t want you to believe 
anything I say; I only want you to try to see what 
makes me believe it. 

My young friend, the Astronomer, has, I suspect, 
been making some addition to his manuscript. At 
any rate some of the lines he read us in the afternoon 
of this same day had never enjoyed the benefit of my 
revision, and I think they had but just been written. 

I noticed that his manner was somewhat more ex- 


310 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


cited than usual, and his voice just towards the close 
a little tremulous. Perhaps I may attribute his im¬ 
provement to the effect of my criticisms, but whatever 
the reason, I think these lines are very nearly as cor¬ 
rect as they would have been if I had looked them 
over. 


WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS. 

VII. 

What if a soul redeemed, a spirit that loved 
While yet on earth and was beloved in turn, 

And still remembered every look and tone 
Of that dear earthly sister who was left 
Among the unwise virgins at the gate, — 

Itself admitted with the bridegroom’s train, — 
What if this spirit redeemed, amid the host 
Of chanting angels, in some transient lull 
Of the eternal anthem, heard the cry 
Of its lost darling, whom in evil hour 
Some wilder pulse of nature led astray 
And left an outcast in a world of fire, 

Condemned to be the sport of cruel fiends, 
Sleepless, unpitying, masters of the skill 
To wring the maddest ecstasies of pain 
From worn-out souls that only ask to die, — 

Would it not long to leave the bliss of Heaven, — 
Bearing a little water in its hand 
To moisten those poor lips that plead in vain 
With Him we call our Father ? Or is all 
So changed in such as taste celestial joy 
They hear unmoved the endless wail of woe, 

The daughter in the same dear tones that hushed 
Her cradled slumbers; she who once had held 
A babe upon her bosom from its voice 
Hoarse with its cry of anguish, yet the same ? 

No ! not in ages when the Dreadful Bird 
Stamped his huge footprints, and the Fearful Beast 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 311 


Strode with the flesh about those fossil hones 
We build to mimic life with pygmy hands, — 

Not in those earliest days when men ran wild 
And gashed each other with their knives of stone 3 
When their low foreheads bulged in ridgy brows 
And their flat hands were callous in the palm 
With walking in the fashion of their sires, 

Grope as they might to find a cruel god 
To work their will on such as human wrath 
Had wrought its worst to torture, and had left 
With rage unsated, white and stark and cold, 
Could hate have shaped a demon more malign 
Than him the dead men mummied in their creed 
And taught their trembling children to adore ! 

Made in his image ! Sweet and gracious souls 
Dear to my heart by nature’s fondest names, 

Is not your memory still the precious mould 
That lends its form to Him who hears my prayer ? 
Thus only I behold him, like to them, 
Long-suffering, gentle, ever slow to wrath, 

If wrath it be that only wounds to heal, 

Ready to meet the wanderer ere he reach 
The door he seeks, forgetful of his sin, 

Longing to clasp him in a father’s arms, 

And seal his pardon with a pitying tear! 

Four gospels tell their story to mankind, 

And none so full of soft, caressing words 
That bring the Maid of Bethlehem and her Babe 
Before our tear-dimmed eyes, as his who learned 
In the meek service of his gracious art 
The tones which like the medicinal balms 
That calm the sufferer’s anguish, soothe our souls. 
— Oh that the loving woman, she who sat 
So long a listener at her Master’s feet, 

Had left us Mary’s Gospel, — all she heard 
Too sweet, too subtle for the ear of man ! 

Mark how the tender-hearted mothers read 
The messages of love between the lines 
Of the same page that loads the bitter tongue 
Of him who deals in terror as his trade 


312 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


With threatening words of wrath that scorch like flame ! 
They tell of angels whispering round the bed 
Of the sweet infant smiling in its dream, 

Of lambs enfolded in the Shepherd’s arms, 

Of Him who blessed the children; of the land 
Where crystal rivers feed unfading flowers, 

Of cities golden-paved with streets of pearl, 

Of the white robes the winged creatures wear, 

The crowns and harps from whose melodious strings 
One long, sweet anthem flows forevermore ! 

— We too had human mothers, even as Thou, 

Whom we have learned to worship as remote 
From mortal kindred, wast a cradled babe. 

The milk of woman filled our branching veins, 

She lulled us with her tender nursery-song, 

And folded round us her untiring arms, 

While the first unremembered twilight year 
Shaped us to conscious being; still we feel 
Her pulses in our own, — too faintly feel; 

Would that the heart of woman warmed our creeds ! 

Not from the sad-eyed hermit’s lonely cell, 

Not from the conclave where the holy men 
Glare on each other, as with angry eyes 
They battle for God’s glory and their own, 

Till, sick of wordy strife, a show of hands 
Fixes the faith of ages yet unborn, — 

Ah, not from these the listening soul can hear 
The Father’s voice that speaks itself divine ! 

Love must be still our Master; till we learn 
What he can teach us of a woman’s heart, 

We know not His, whose love embraces all. 

There are certain nervous conditions peculiar to 
women in which the common effects of poetry and of 
music upon their sensibilities are strangely exagger¬ 
ated. It was not perhaps to be wondered at that 
Octavia fainted when Virgil in reading from his great 
poem came to the line beginning Tu Marcellus eris. 
It is not hard to believe the story told of one of the 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 313 

two Davidson sisters, that the singing of some of 
Moore’s plaintive melodies would so impress her as 
almost to take away the faculties of sense and motion. 
But there must have been some special cause for the 
singular nervous state into which this reading threw 
the young girl, our Scheherezade. She was doubtless 
tired with overwork and troubled with the thought 
that she was not doing herself justice, and that she 
was doomed to be the helpless prey of some of those 
corbies who not only pick out corbies’ eyes, but find 
no other diet so nutritious and agreeable. 

Whatever the cause may have been, her heart 
heaved tumultuously, her color came and went, and 
though she managed to avoid a scene by the exercise 
of all her self-control, I watched her very anxiously, 
for I was afraid she would have had a hysteric turn, 
or in one of her pallid moments that she would have 
fainted and fallen like one dead before us. 

I was very glad, therefore, when evening came, to 
find that she was going out for a lesson on the stars. 
I knew the open air was what she needed, and I 
thought the walk would do her good, whether she made 
any new astronomical acquisitions or not. 

It was now late in the autumn, and the trees were 
pretty nearly stripped of their leaves. There was no 
place so favorable as the Common for the study of 
the heavens. The skies were brilliant with stars, and 
the air was just keen enough to remind our young 
friends that the cold season was at hand. They wan¬ 
dered round for a while, and at last found themselves 
under the Great Elm, drawn thither, no doubt, by 
the magnetism it is so well known to exert over the 
natives of its own soil and those who have often 
been under the shadow of its outstretched arms. The 


314 THE POET AT THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 

venerable survivor of its contemporaries that flour¬ 
ished in the days when Blackstone rode beneath it 
on his bull was now a good deal broken by age, yet 
not without marks of lusty vitality. It had been 
wrenched and twisted and battered by so many scores 
of winters that some of its limbs were crippled and 
many of its joints were shaky, and but for the sup¬ 
port of the iron braces that lent their strong sinews 
to its more infirm members it would have gone to 
pieces in the first strenuous northeaster or the first 
sudden and violent gale from the southwest. But 
there it stood, and there it stands as yet, — though its 
obituary was long ago written after one of the terri¬ 
ble storms that tore its branches, — leafing out hope¬ 
fully in April as if it were trying in its dumb lan¬ 
guage to lisp “Our Father,” and dropping its slender 
burden of foliage in October as softly as if it were 
whispering Amen! 

Not far from the ancient and monumental tree lay 
a small sheet of water, once agile with life and vocal 
with evening melodies, but now stirred only by the 
swallow as he dips his wing, or by the morning bath 
of the English sparrows, those high-headed, thick¬ 
bodied, full-feeding, hot-tempered little John Bulls 
that keep up such a swashing and swabbing and spat¬ 
tering round all the water basins, one might think 
from the fuss they make about it that a bird never 
took a bath here before, and that they were the mis¬ 
sionaries of ablution to the unwashed Western world. 

There are those who speak lightly of this small 
aqueous expanse, the eye of the sacred enclosure, 
which has looked unwinking on the happy faces of so 
many natives and the curious features of so many 
strangers. The music of its twilight minstrels has 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 815 

long ceased, but their memory lingers like an echo 
in the name it bears. Cherish it, inhabitants of 
the two-hilled city, once three-hilled; ye who have 
said to the mountain, “Remove hence,” and turned 
the sea into dry land! May no contractor fill his 
pockets by undertaking to fill thee, thou granite- 
girdled lakelet, or drain the civic purse by drawing 
off thy waters! For art thou not the Palladium of 
our Troy? Didst thou not, like the Divine image 
which was the safeguard of Ilium, fall from the skies, 
and if the Trojan could look with pride upon the 
heaven-descended form of the Goddess of Wisdom, 
cannot he who dwells by thy shining oval look in that 
mirror and contemplate Himself,—the Native of 
Boston. 

There must be some fatality which carries our 
young men and maidens in the direction of the Com¬ 
mon when they have anything very particular to ex¬ 
change their views about. At any rate I remember 
two of our young friends brought up here a good many 
years ago, and I understand that there is one path 
across the enclosure which a young man must not ask 
a young woman to take with him unless he means 
business, for an action will hold for breach of prom¬ 
ise, if she consents to accompany him, and he chooses 
to forget his obligations. 

Our two young people stood at the western edge of 
the little pool, studying astronomy in the reflected 
firmament. The Pleiades were trembling in the wave 
before them, and the three great stars of Orion,— 
for these constellations were both glittering in the 
eastern sky. 

“There is no place too humble for the glories of 
heaven to shine in,” she said. 


316 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

“And their splendor makes even this little pool 
beautiful and noble,” he answered. “Where is the 
light to come from that is to do as much for our poor 
human lives? ” 

A simple question enough, but the young girl felt 
her color change as she answered, “From friendship, 

I think.” 

— Grazing only as yet, — not striking full, — 
hardly hitting at all, — but there are questions and 
answers that come so very near, the wind of them 
alone almost takes the breath away. 

There was an interval of silence. Two young per¬ 
sons can stand looking at water for a long time with¬ 
out feeling the necessity of speaking. Especially 
when the water is alive with stars and the young per¬ 
sons are thoughtful and impressible. The water 
seems to do half the thinking while one is looking at 
it; its movements are felt in the brain very much 
like thought. When I was in full training as a 
flaneur, I could stand on the Pont Neuf with the 
other experts in the great science of passive cerebra¬ 
tion and look at the river for half an hour with so lit¬ 
tle mental articulation that when I moved on it seemed 
as if my thinking-marrow had been asleep and was 
just waking up refreshed after its nap. 

So the reader can easily account for the interval of 
silence. It is hard to tell how long it would have 
lasted, but just then a lubberly intrusive boy threw 
a great stone, which convulsed the firmament, — the 
one at their feet, I mean. The six Pleiads disap¬ 
peared as if in search of their lost sister; the belt of 
Orion was broken asunder, and a hundred worlds 
dissolved back into chaos. They turned away and 
strayed off into one of the more open paths, where the 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 317 

view of the sky over them was unobstructed. For 
some reason or other the astronomical lesson did not 
get on very fast this evening. 

Presently the young man asked his pupil: 

— Do you know what the constellation directly over 
our heads is? 

— Is it not Cassiopea? — she asked a little hesita¬ 
tingly. 

— No, it is Andromeda. You ought not to have 
forgotten her, for I remember showing you a double 
star, the one in her right foot, through the equatorial 
telescope. You have not forgotten the double star, 
— the two that shone for each other and made a little 
world by themselves? 

— No, indeed, — she answered, and blushed, and 
felt ashamed because she had said indeed , as if it had 
been an emotional recollection. 

The double-star allusion struck another dead si¬ 
lence. She would have given a week’s pay to any 
invisible attendant that would have cut her stay-lace. 

At last: Do you know the story of Andromeda? — 
he said. 

— Perhaps I did once, but suppose I don’t remem¬ 
ber it. 

He told her the story of the unfortunate maiden 
chained to a rock and waiting for a sea-beast that was 
coming to devour her, and how Perseus came and set 
her free, and won her love with her life. And then 
he began something about a young man chained to his 
rock, which was a star-gazer’s tower, a prey by turns 
to ambition, and lonely self-contempt and unwholesome 
scorn of the life he looked down upon after the seren¬ 
ity of the firmament, and endless questionings that 
led him nowhere, — and now he had only one more 


318 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

question to ask. He loved her. Would she break 
his chain ? — He held both his hands out towards her, 
the palms together, as if they were fettered at the 
wrists. She took hold of them very gently; parted 
them a little; then wider — wider — and found herself 
all at once folded, unresisting, in her lover’s arms. 

So there was a new double-star in the living firma¬ 
ment. The constellations seemed to kindle with new 
splendors as the student and the story-teller walked 
homeward in their light; Alioth and Algol looked 
down on them as on the first pair of lovers they shone 
over, and the autumn air seemed full of harmonies as 
when the morning stars sang together. 


XII. 

The old Master had asked us, the Young Astrono¬ 
mer and myself, into his library, to hear him read 
some passages from his interleaved book. We three 
had formed a kind of little club without knowing it 
from the time when the young man began reading 
those extracts from his poetical reveries which I have 
reproduced in these pages. Perhaps we agreed in too 
many things, — I suppose if we could have had a good 
hard-headed, old-fashioned New England divine to 
meet with us it might have acted as a wholesome cor¬ 
rective. For we had it all our own way; the Lady’s 
kindly remonstrance was taken in good part, but did 
not keep us from talking pretty freely, and as for the 
Young Girl, she listened with the tranquillity and 
fearlessness which a very simple trusting creed natu¬ 
rally gives those who hold it. The fewer outworks to 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 319 


the citadel of belief, the fewer points there are to be 
threatened and endangered. 

The reader must not suppose that I even attempt to 
reproduce everything exactly as it took place in our 
conversations, or when we met to listen to the Mas¬ 
ter’s prose or to the Young Astronomer’s verse. I do 
not pretend to give all the pauses and interruptions 
by question or otherwise. I could not always do it if 
I tried, but I do not want to, for oftentimes it is bet¬ 
ter to let the speaker or reader go on continuously, 
although there may have been many breaks in the 
course of the conversation or reading. When, for 
instance, I by and by reproduce what the Landlady 
said to us, I shall give it almost without any hint that 
it was arrested in its flow from time to time by vari¬ 
ous expressions on the part of the hearers. 

I can hardly say what the reason of it was, but it is 
very certain that I had a vague sense of some impend¬ 
ing event as we took our seats in the Master’s library. 
He seemed particularly anxious that we should be 
comfortably seated, and shook up the cushions of the 
arm-chairs himself, and got them into the right 
places. 

Now go to sleep — he said — or listen, — just which 
you like best. But I am going to begin by telling 
you both a secret. 

Liberavi animam meam. That is the meaning of 
my book and of my literary life, if I may give such a 
name to that party-colored shred of human existence. 
I have unburdened myself in this book, and in some 
other pages, of what I was born to say. Many things 
that I have said in my ripe days have been aching 
in my soul since I was a mere child. I say aching, 
because they conflicted with many of my inherited 


320 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


beliefs, or rather traditions. I did not know then 
that two strains of blood were striving in me for the 
mastery, — two! twenty, perhaps, — twenty thousand, 
for aught I know, — but represented to me by two, 
— paternal and maternal. Blind forces in them¬ 
selves; shaping thoughts as they shaped features and 
battled for the moulding of constitution and the min¬ 
gling of temperament. 

Philosophy and poetry came to me before I knew 
their names. 

Je fis mes premiers vers, sans savoir les dcrire. 

Not verses so much as the stuff that verses are made 
of. I don’t suppose that the thoughts which came up 
of themselves in my mind were so mighty different 
from what come up in the minds of other young folks. 
And that ’s the best reason I could give for telling 
’em. I don’t believe anything I’ve written is as good 
as it seemed to me when I wrote it, — he stopped, for 
he was afraid he was lying, — not much that I ’ ve 
written, at any rate, — he said — with a smile at the 
honesty which made him qualify his statement. But 
I do know this: I have struck a good many chords, 
first and last, in the consciousness of other people. I 
confess to a tender feeling for my little brood of 
thoughts. When they have been welcomed and 
praised it has pleased me, and if at any time they have 
been rudely handled and despitefully entreated it has 
cost me a little worry. I don’t despise reputation, 
and I should like to be remembered as having said 
something worth lasting well enough to last. 

But all that is nothing to the main comfort I feel 
as a writer. I have got rid of something my mind 
could not keep to itself and rise as it was meant to 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 321 

*into higher regions. I saw the aeronauts the other 
day emptying from the hags some of the sand that 
served as ballast. It glistened a moment in the sun¬ 
light as a slender shower, and then was lost and seen 
no more as it scattered itself unnoticed. But the air¬ 
ship rose higher as the sand was poured out, and so 
it seems to me I have felt myself getting above the 
mists and clouds whenever I have lightened myself of 
some portion of the mental ballast I have carried with 
me. Why should I hope or fear when I send out my 
book? I have had my reward, for I have wrought 
out my thought, I have said my say, I have freed my 
soul. I can afford to be forgotten. 

Look here! — he said. I keep oblivion always be¬ 
fore me. — He pointed to a singularly perfect and 
beautiful trilobite which was lying on a pile of manu¬ 
scripts. — Each time I fill a sheet of paper with what 
I am writing, I lay it beneath this relic of a dead 
world, and project my thought forward into eternity 
as far as this extinct crustacean carries it backward. 
When my heart beats too lustily with vain hopes of 
being remembered, I press the cold fossil against it 
and it grows calm. I touch my forehead with it, and 
its anxious furrows grow smooth. Our world, too, 
with all its breathing life, is but a leaf to be folded 
with the other strata, and if I am only patient, by 
and by I shall be just as famous as imperious Caesar 
himself, embedded with me in a conglomerate. 

He began reading: — “There is no new thing under 
the sun,” said the Preacher. He would not say so 
now, if he should come to life for a little while, and 
have his photograph taken, and go up in a balloon, 
and take a trip by railroad and a voyage by steam- 


322 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


ship, and get a message from General Grant by the 
cable, and see a man’s leg cut off without its hurting 
him. If it did not take his breath away and lay him 
out as flat as the Queen of Sheba was knocked over by 
the splendors of his court, he must have rivalled our 
Indians in the nil admirari line. 

For all that, dt is a strange thing to see what num¬ 
bers of new things are really old. There are many 
modern contrivances that are of as early date as the 
first man, if not thousands of centuries older. Every¬ 
body knows how all the arrangements of our tele¬ 
scopes and microscopes are anticipated in the eye, 
and how our best musical instruments are surpassed 
by the larynx. But there are some very odd things 
any anatomist can tell, showing how our recent con¬ 
trivances are anticipated in the human body. In the 
alimentary canal are certain pointed eminences called 
villi , and certain ridges called valvidce conniventes . 
The makers of heating apparatus have exactly repro¬ 
duced the first in the “pot” of their furnaces, and 
the second in many of the radiators to be seen in our 
public buildings. The object in the body and the 
heating apparatus is the same; to increase the extent 
of surface. — We mix hair with plaster (as the Egyp¬ 
tians mixed straw with clay to make bricks) so that 
it shall hold more firmly. But before man had any 
* artificial dwelling the same contrivance of mixing 
fibrous threads with a cohesive substance had been 
employed in the jointed fabric of his own spinal col¬ 
umn. India-rubber is modern, but the yellow animal 
substance which is elastic like that, and serves the 
same purpose in the animal economy which that serves 
in our mechanical contrivances, is as old as the mam¬ 
malia. The dome, the round and the Gothic arch, 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 323 

the groined roof, the flying buttress, are all familiar 
to those who have studied the bony frame of man. 
All forms of the lever and all the principal kinds of 
hinges are to be met with in our own frames. The 
valvular arrangements of the blood-vessels are unap¬ 
proached by any artificial apparatus, and the arrange¬ 
ments for preventing friction are so perfect that two 
surfaces will play on each other for fourscore years or 
more and never once trouble their owner by catching 
or rubbing so as to be felt or heard. 

But stranger than these repetitions are the coinci¬ 
dences one finds in the manners and speech of anti¬ 
quity and our own time. In the days when Flood 
Ireson was drawn in the cart by the Maenads of Mar¬ 
blehead, that fishing town had the name of nurturing 
a young population not over fond of strangers. It 
used to be said that if an unknown landsman showed 
himself in the streets, the boys would follow after 
him, crying, “Rock him! Rock him! He’s got a 
long-tailed coat on! ” 

Now if one opens the Odyssey, he will find that the 
Phaeacians, three thousand years ago, were wonder¬ 
fully like these youthful Marbleheaders. The blue¬ 
eyed Goddess who convoys Ulysses, under the dis¬ 
guise of a young maiden of the place, gives him some 
excellent advice. “Hold your tongue,” she says, 
“and don’t look at anybody or ask any questions, for 
these are seafaring people, and don’t like to have 
strangers round or anybody that does not belong 
here.” 

Who would have thought that the saucy question, 
“Does your mother know you ’re out? ” was the very 
same that Horace addressed to the bore who attacked 
him in the Via Sacra f 


324 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


Interpellandi locus hie erat; Est tibi mater ? 

Cognati, queis te salvo est opus ? 

And think of the London cockney’s prefix of the 
letter h to innocent words beginning with a vowel hav¬ 
ing its prototype in the speech of the vulgar Roman, 
as may be seen in the verses of Catullus: 

CAommoda dicebat, siquando commoda vellet 
Dicere, et Ainsidias Arrius insidias. 

Et turn mirifice sperabat se esse locutum, 

Cum quantum poterat, dixerat Ainsidias . . . 

Hoc misso in Syriam, requierant omnibus aures . • . 

Cum subito affertur nuncius horribilis ; 

Ionios fluctus, postquam illuc Arrius isset, 

Jam non Ionios esse, sed Hionios. 

— Our neighbors of Manhattan have an excellent 
jest about our crooked streets which, if they were a 
little more familiar with a native author of unques¬ 
tionable veracity, they would strike out from the letter 
of “Our Boston Correspondent,” where it is a source 
of perennial hilarity. It is worth while to reprint, 
for the benefit of whom it may concern, a paragraph 
from the authentic history of the venerable Diedrich 
Knickerbocker: 

“The sage council, as has been mentioned in a pre¬ 
ceding chapter, not being able to determine upon any 
plan for the building of their city, — the cows, in a 
laudable fit of patriotism, took it under their peculiar 
charge, and as they went to and from pasture, estab¬ 
lished paths through the bushes, on each side of which 
the good folks built their houses; which is one cause 
of the rambling and picturesque turns and labyrinths, 
which distinguish certain streets of New York at this 
very day.” 

— When I was a little boy there came to stay with 
us for a while a young lady with a singularly white 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 325 

complexion. Now I had often seen the masons slack¬ 
ing lime, and I thought it was the whitest thing I 
had ever looked upon. So I always called this fair 
visitor of ours Slacked Lime . I think she is still 
living in a neighboring State, and I am sure she has 
never forgotten the fanciful name I gave her. But 
within ten or a dozen years I have seen this very same 
comparison going the round of the papers, and cred¬ 
ited to a Welsh poet, David Ap Gwyllym, or some¬ 
thing like that, by name. 

— I turned a pretty sentence enough in one of my 
lectures about finding poppies springing up amidst 
the corn; as if it had been foreseen by nature that 
wherever there should be hunger that asked for food, 
there would be pain that needed relief, — and many 
years afterwards I had the pleasure of finding that 
Mistress Piozzi had been beforehand with me in sug¬ 
gesting the same moral reflection. 

— I should like to carry some of my friends to see 
a giant bee-hive I have discovered. Its hum can be 
heard half a mile, and the great white swarm counts 
its tens of thousands. They pretend to call it a plan- 
ing-mill, but if it is not a bee-hive it is so like one 
that if a hundred people have not said so before me, 
it is very singular that they have not. If I wrote 
verses I would try to bring it in, and I suppose people 
would start up in a dozen places, and say, “Oh, that 
bee-hive simile is' mine, — and besides, did not Mr. 
Bayard Taylor call the snowflakes ‘white bees’?” 

i 

I think the old Master had chosen these trivialities 
on purpose to amuse the Young Astronomer and my¬ 
self, if possible, and so make sure of our keeping 
awake while he went on reading, as follows: 


326 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— How the sweet souls of all time strike the same 
note, the same because it is in unison with the divine 
voice that sings to them! I read in the Zend Avesta, 
“No earthly man with a hundred-fold strength speaks 
so much evil as Mithra with heavenly strength speaks 
good. No earthly man with a hundred-fold strength 
does so much evil as Mithra with heavenly strength 
does good.” 

And now leave Persia and Zoroaster, and come 
down with me to our own New England and one of 
our old Puritan preachers. It was in the dreadful 
days of the Salem Witchcraft delusion that one Jon¬ 
athan Singletary, being then in the prison at Ipswich, 
gave his testimony as to certain fearful occurrences, 
— a great noise, as of many cats climbing, skipping, 
and jumping, of throwing about of furniture, and of 
men walking in the chambers, with crackling and 
shaking as if the house would fall upon him. 

“I was at present,” he says, “something affrighted; 
yet considering what I had lately heard made out by 
Mr. Mitchel at Cambridge, that there is more good 
in God than there is evil in sin, and that although 
God is the greatest good and sin the greatest evil, yet 
the first Being of evil cannot weane the scales or over¬ 
power the first Being of good: so considering that the 
authour of good was of greater power than the au- 
thour of evil, God was pleased of his goodness to keep 
me from being out of measure frighted.” 

I shall always bless the memory of this poor, timid 
creature for saving that dear remembrance of “ Match¬ 
less Mitchel.” How many, like him, have thought 
they were preaching a new gospel, when they were 
only reaffirming the principles which underlie the 
Magna Charta of humanity, and are common to the 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 327 

noblest utterances of all the nobler creeds! But 
spoken by those solemn lips to those stern, simple- 
minded hearers, the words I have cited seem to me to 
have a fragrance like the precious ointment of spike¬ 
nard with which Mary anointed her Master’s feet. 
I can see the little bare meeting-house, with the godly 
deacons, and the grave matrons, and the comely maid¬ 
ens, and the sober manhood of the village, with the 
small group of college students sitting by themselves 
under the shadow of the awful Presidential Presence, 
all listening to that preaching, which was, as Cotton 
Mather says, “as a very lovely song of one that hath 
a pleasant voice and as the holy pastor utters those 
blessed words, which are not of any one church or age, 
but of all time, the humble place of worship is filled 
with their perfume, as the house where Mary knelt was 
filled with the odor of the precious ointment. 

— The Master rose, as he finished reading this sen¬ 
tence, and, walking to the window, adjusted a cur¬ 
tain which he seemed to find a good deal of trouble in 
getting co hang just as he wanted it. 

He came back to his arm-chair, and began reading 
again: 

— If men would only open their eyes to the fact 
which stares them in the face from history, and is 
made clear enough by the slightest glance at the con¬ 
dition of mankind,' that humanity is of immeasurably 
greater importance than their own or any other par¬ 
ticular belief, they would no more attempt to make 
private property of the grace of God than to fence in 
the sunshine for their own special use and enjoyment. 

We are all tattoed in our cradles with the beliefs of 
our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is 


328 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of 
the superstitious fears which were early implanted in 
his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason 
may reject them, he will still feel as the famous woman 
did about ghosts, Je n’y crois pas, maisje les crains , 
— “I don’t believe in them, but I am afraid of them, 
nevertheless.” 

— As people grow older they come at length to live 
so much in memory that they often think with a kind 
of pleasure of losing their dearest blessings. Nothing 
can be so perfect while we possess it as it will seem 
when remembered. The friend we love best may 
sometimes weary us by his presence or vex us by his 
infirmities. How sweet to think of him as he will be 
to us after we have outlived him ten or a dozen years! 
Then we can recall him in his best moments, bid him 
stay with us as long as we want his company, and 
send him away when we wish to be alone again. One 
might alter Shenstone’s well-known epitaph to suit 
such a case: — 

Heu ! quanto minus est cum te vivo versari 
Quam erit (vel esset ) tui mortui reminisse ! 

“ Alas ! how much less the delight of thy living presence 
Than will (or would) be that of remembering thee when thou 
hast left us ! ” 

I want to stop here — I the Poet — and put in a 
few reflections of my own, suggested by what I have 
been giving the reader from the Master’s Book, and 
in a similar vein. 

— How few things there are that do not change 
their whole aspect in the course of a single genera¬ 
tion! The landscape around us is wholly different. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 329 

Even the outlines of the hills that surround us are 
changed by the creeping of the villages with their 
spires and school-houses up their sides. The sky re¬ 
mains the same, and the ocean. A few old church¬ 
yards look very much as they used to, except, of 
course, in Boston, where the gravestones have been 
rooted up and planted in rows with walks between 
them, to the utter disgrace and ruin of our most ven¬ 
erated cemeteries. The Registry of Deeds and the 
Probate Office show us the same old folios, where we 
can read our grandfather’s title to his estate (if we 
had a grandfather and he happened to own anything) 
and see how many pots and kettles there were in his 
kitchen by the inventory of his personal property. 

Among living people none remain so long un¬ 
changed as the actors. I can see the same Othello 
to-day, if I choose, that when I was a boy I saw smo¬ 
thering Mrs. Duff-Desdemona with the pillow, under 
the instigations of Mr. Cooper-Iago. A few stone 
heavier than he was then, no doubt, but the same 
truculent blackamoor that took by the thr-r-r-oat the 
circumcised dog in Aleppo, and told us about it in the 
old Boston Theatre. In the course of a fortnight, if 
I care to cross the water, I can see Mademoiselle De- 
jazet in the same parts I saw her in under Louis 
Philippe, and be charmed by the same grace and viva¬ 
city which delighted my grandmother (if she was in 
Paris, and went to see her in the part of Fanchon 
toute seule at the Theatre des Capucines) in the days 
when the great Napoleon was still only First Consul. 

The graveyard and the stage are pretty much the 
only places where you can expect to find your friends 
as you left them, five and twenty or fifty years ago. — 
I have noticed, I may add, that old theatre-goers 


330 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


bring back the past with their stories more vividly 
than men with any other experiences. There were 
two old New-Yorkers that I used to love to sit talk¬ 
ing with about the stage. One was a scholar and a 
writer of note; a pleasant old gentleman, with the 
fresh cheek of an octogenarian Cupid. The other 
not less noted in his way, deep in local lore, large¬ 
brained, full-blooded, of somewhat perturbing and 
tumultuous presence. It was good to hear them talk 
of George Frederic Cooke, of Kean, and the lesser 
stars of those earlier constellations. Better still to 
breakfast with old Samuel Rogers, as some of my 
readers have done more than once, and hear him an¬ 
swer to the question who was the best actor he re¬ 
membered, “I think, on the whole, Garrick.” 

If we did but know how to question these charming 
old people before it is too late! About ten years, 
more or less, after the generation in advance of our 
own has all died off, it occurs to us all at once, 
“ There! I can ask my old friend what he knows of 
that picture, which must be a Copley; of that house 
and its legends about which there is such a mystery. 
He (or she) must know all about that.” Too late! 
Too late! 

Still, now and then one saves a reminiscence that 
means a good deal by means of a casual question. I 
asked the first of those two old New-Yorkers the fol¬ 
lowing question: “Who, on the whole, seemed to 
you the most considerable person you ever met? ” 

Now* it must be remembered that this was a man 
who had lived in a city that calls itself the metropolis, 
one who had been a member of the State and the Na¬ 
tional Legislature, who had come in contact with men 
of letters and men of business, with politicians and 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 331 


members of all the professions, during a long and dis¬ 
tinguished public career. I paused for his answer 
with no little curiosity. Would it be one of the great 
Ex-Presidents whose names were known to all the 
world? Would it be the silver-tongued orator of 
Kentucky or the “God-like” champion of the Con¬ 
stitution, our New-England Jupiter Capitolinus? 
Who would it be ? 

“Take it altogether,” he answered, very deliber¬ 
ately, “I should say Colonel Elisha Williams was the 
most notable personage that I have met with.” 

— Colonel Elisha Williams! And who might he 
be, forsooth? A gentleman of singular distinction, 
you may be well assured, even though you are not 
familiar with his name; but as I am not writing a 
biographical dictionary, I shall leave it to my reader 
to find out who and what he was. 

— One would like to live long enough to witness 
certain things which will no doubt come to pass by 
and by. I remember that when one of our good kind- 
hearted old millionnaires was growing very infirm, his 
limbs failing him, and his trunk getting packed with 
the infirmities which mean that one is bound on a long 
journey, he said very simply and sweetly, “I don’t 
care about living a great deal longer, but I should like 

to live long enough to find out how much old- 

-(a many-millioned fellow-citizen) is worth.” 

And without committing myself on the longevity- 
question, I confess I should like to live long enough to 
see a few things happen that are like to come, sooner 
or later. 

I want to hold the skull of Abraham in my hand. 
They will go through the cave of Machpelah at 
Hebron, I feel sure, in the course of a few genera- 



332 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

tions at the furthest, and as Dr. Robinson knows of 
nothing which should lead us to question the correct¬ 
ness of the tradition which regards this as the place of 
sepulture of Abraham and the other patriarchs, there 
is no reason why we may not find his mummied body 
in perfect preservation, if he was embalmed after the 
Egyptian fashion. I suppose the tomb of David will 
be explored by a commission in due time, and I should 
like to see the phrenological developments of that 
great king and divine singer and warm-blooded man. 
If, as seems probable, the anthropological section of 
society manages to get round the curse that protects 
the bones of Shakespeare, I should like to see the 
dome which rounded itself over his imperial brain. — 
Not that I am what is called a phrenologist, but I am 
curious as to the physical developments of these fel¬ 
low-mortals of mine, and a little in want of a sensa¬ 
tion. 

I should like to live long enough to see the course 
of the Tiber turned, and the bottom of the river thor¬ 
oughly dredged. I wonder if they would find the 
seven-branched golden candlestick brought from Jeru¬ 
salem by Titus, and said to have been dropped from 
the Milvian bridge. I have often thought of going 
fishing for it some year when I wanted a vacation, as 
some of my friends used to go to Ireland to fish for 
salmon. There was an attempt of that kind, I think, 
a few years ago. We all know how it looks well 
enough, from the figure of it on the Arch of Titus, 
but I should like to “heft” it in my own hand, and 
carry it home and shine it up (excuse my colloquial¬ 
isms), and sit down and look at it, and think and 
think and think until the Temple of Solomon built up 
its walls of hewn stone and its roofs of cedar around 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 333 

me as noiselessly as when it rose, and “there was 
neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in 
the house while it was in building.” 

All this, you will remember, Beloved, is a digres¬ 
sion on my own account, and I return to the old 
Master whom I left smiling at his own alteration of 
Shenstone’s celebrated inscription. He now begins 
reading again: 

— I want it to be understood that I consider that a 
certain number of persons are at liberty to dislike me 
peremptorily, without showing cause, and that they 
give no offence whatever in so doing. 

If I did not cheerfully acquiesce in this sentiment 
towards myself on the part of others, I should not 
feel at liberty to indulge my own aversions. I try to 
cultivate a Christian feeling to all my fellow-crea¬ 
tures, but inasmuch as I must also respect truth and 
honesty, I confess to myself a certain number of in¬ 
alienable dislikes and prejudices, some of which may 
possibly be shared by others. Some of these are 
purely instinctive, for others I can assign a reason. 
Our likes and dislikes play so important a part in the 
Order of Things that it is well to see on what they 
are founded. 

There are persons I meet occasionally who are too 
intelligent by half for my liking. They know my 
thoughts beforehand, and tell me what I was going to 
say. Of course they are masters of all my knowledge, 
and a good deal besides; have read all the books I 
have read, and in later editions; have had all the ex¬ 
periences I have been through, and more too. In my 
private opinion every mother’s son of them will lie at 
any time rather than confess ignorance. 

— I have a kind of dread, rather than hatred, of 


334 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

persons with a large excess of vitality; great feeders, 
great laughers, great story-tellers, who come sweeping 
over their company with a huge tidal wave of animal 
spirits and boisterous merriment. I have pretty good 
spirits myself, and enjoy a little mild pleasantry, but 
I am oppressed and extinguished by these great lusty, 
noisy creatures, and feel as if I were a mute at a 
funeral when they get into full blast. 

— I cannot get along much better with those droop¬ 
ing, languid people, whose vitality falls short as much 
as that of the others is in excess. I have not life 
enough for two; I wish I had. It is not very en¬ 
livening to meet a fellow-creature whose expression 
and accents say, “You are the hair that breaks the 
camel’s back of my endurance, you are the last drop 
that makes my cup of woe run over”; persons whose 
heads drop on one side like those of toothless infants, 
whose voices recall the tones in which our old snuf¬ 
fling choir used to wail out the verses of 

“ Life is the time to serve the Lord.” 

— There is another style which does not captivate 
me. I recognize an attempt at the grand manner 
now and then, in persons who are well enough in their 
way, but of no particular importance, socially or oth¬ 
erwise. Some family tradition of wealth or distinc¬ 
tion is apt to be at the bottom of it, and it survives 
all the advantages that used to set it off. I like fam¬ 
ily pride as well as my neighbors, and respect the 
high-born fellow-citizen whose progenitors have not 
worked in their shirt-sleeves for the last two genera¬ 
tions full as much as I ought to. But grand-pere 
oblige; a person with a known graudfather is too dis¬ 
tinguished to find it necessary to put on airs. The 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 335 


few Royal Princes I liave happened to know were very 
easy people to get along with, and had not half the 
social knee-action I have often seen in the collapsed 
dowagers who lifted their eyebrows at me in my ear¬ 
lier years. 

— My heart does not warm as it should do towards 
the persons, not intimates, whb are always too glad to 
see me when we meet by accident, and discover all at 
once that they have a vast deal to unbosom themselves 
of to me. 

— There is one blameless person whom I cannot 
love and have no excuse for hating. It is the innocent 
fellow-creature, otherwise inoffensive to me, whom I 
find I have involuntarily joined on turning a corner. 
I suppose the Mississippi, which was flowing quietly 
along, minding its own business, hates the Missouri 
for coming into it all at once with its muddy stream. 
I suppose the Missouri in like manner hates the Mis¬ 
sissippi for diluting with its limpid, but insipid cur¬ 
rent the rich reminiscences of the varied soils through 
which its own stream has wandered. I will not com¬ 
pare myself to the clear or the turbid current, but I 
will own that my heart sinks when I find all of a sud¬ 
den I am in for a corner confluence, and I cease lov¬ 
ing my neighbor as myself until I can get away ( from 
him. 

— These antipathies are at least weaknesses; they 
may be sins in the eye of the Recording Angel. I often 
reproach myself with my wrong-doings. I should like 
sometimes to thank Heaven for saving me from some 
kinds of transgression, and even for granting me some 
qualities that if I dared I should be disposed to call 
virtues. I should do so, I suppose, if I did not re¬ 
member the story of the Pharisee. That ought not to 


336 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

hinder me. The parable was told to illustrate a single 
virtue, humility, and the most unwarranted inferences 
have been drawn from it as to the whole character of 
the two parties. It seems not at all unlikely, but 
rather probable, that the Pharisee was a fairer dealer, 
a better husband, and a more charitable person than 
the Publican, whose name has come down to us “linked 
with one virtue,” but who may have been guilty, for 
aught that appears to the contrary, of “a thousand 
crimes.” Remember how we limit the application of 
other parables. The lord, it will be recollected, com¬ 
mended the unjust steward because he had done 
wisely. His shrewdness was held up as an example, 
but after all he was a miserable swindler, and de¬ 
served the state-prison as much as many of our finan¬ 
cial operators. The parable of the Pharisee and the 
Publican is a perpetual warning against spiritual 
pride. But it must not frighten any one of us out of 
being thankful that he is not, like this or that neigh¬ 
bor, under bondage to strong drink or opium, that he 
is not an Erie-Railroad Manager, and that his head 
rests in virtuous calm on his own pillow. If he prays 
in the morning to be kept out of temptation as well 
as for his daily bread, shall he not return thanks at 
night that he has not fallen into sin as well as that his 
stomach has been filled? I do not think the poor 
Pharisee has ever had fair play, and I am afraid a 
good many people sin with the comforting, half-latent 
intention of smiting their breasts afterwards and re¬ 
peating the prayer of the Publican. 

(, Sensation .) 

This little movement which I have thus indicated 
seemed to give the Master new confidence in his audi¬ 
ence. He turned over several pages until he came to 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 337 

a part of the interleaved volume where we could all 
see he had written in a passage of new matter in red 
ink as of special interest. 

— I told you, he said, in Latin, and I repeat it in 
English, that I have freed my soul in these pages, — I 
have spoken my mind. I have read you a few ex* 
tracts, most of them of rather slight texture, and 
some of them, you perhaps thought, whimsical. But 
I meant, if I thought you were in the right mood for 
listening to it, to read you some paragraphs which 
give in small compass the pith, the marrow, of all that 
my experience has taught me. Life is a fatal com- 
plaint, and an eminently contagious one. I took it 
early, as we all do, and have treated it all along with 
the best palliatives I could get hold of, inasmuch as 
I could find no radical cure for its evils, and have 
so far managed to keep pretty comfortable under it. 

It is a great thing for a man to put the whole 
meaning of his life into a few paragraphs, if he does 
it so that others can make anything out of it. If he 
conveys his wisdom after the fashion of the old alche¬ 
mists, he may as well let it alone. He must talk in 
very plain words, and that is what I have done. You 
want to know what a certain number of scores of years 
have taught me that I think best worth telling. If I 
had half a dozen square inches of paper, and one pen¬ 
ful of ink, and five minutes to use them in for the in¬ 
struction of those who come after me, what should I 
put down in writing? That is the question. 

Perhaps I should be wiser if I refused to attempt 
any such brief statement of the most valuable lesson 
that life has taught me. I am by no means sure that 
I had not better draw my pen through the page that 
holds the quintessence of my vital experiences, and 


838 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

leave those who wish to know what it is to distil to 
themselves from my many printed pages. But I have 
excited your curiosity, and I see that you are impa¬ 
tient to hear what the wisdom, or the folly, it may be, 
of a life shows for, when it is crowded into a few lines 
as the fragrance of a gardenful of roses is concen¬ 
trated in a few drops of perfume. 

— By this time I confess I was myself a little ex¬ 
cited. What was he going to tell us f The Young 
Astronomer looked upon him with an eye as clear and 
steady and brilliant as the evening star, but I could 
see that he too was a little nervous, wondering what 
would come next. 

The old Master adjusted his large roimd spectacles, 
and began: 

— It has cost me fifty years to find my place in the 
Order of Things. I had explored all the sciences; I 
had studied the literature of all ages; I had travelled 
in many lands; I had learned how to follow the work¬ 
ing of thought in men and of sentiment and instinct 
in women. I had examined for myself all the reli¬ 
gions that could make out any claim for themselves. 
I had fasted and prayed with the monks of a lonely 
convent; I had mingled with the crowds that shouted 
glory at camp-meetings; I had listened to the threats 
of Calvinists and the promises of Universalists; I had 
been a devout attendant on a Jewish Synagogue; I 
was in correspondence with an intelligent Buddhist; 
and I met frequently with the inner circle of Ration¬ 
alists, who believed in the persistence of Force, and 
the identity of alimentary substances with virtue, and 
were reconstructing the universe on this basis, with 
absolute exclusion of all Supernumeraries. In these 
pursuits I had passed the larger part of my half-cen- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 339 


tury of existence, as yet with little satisfaction. It 
was on the morning of my fiftieth birthday that the 
solution of the great problem I had sought so long 
came to me as a simple formula, with a few grand but 
obvious inferences. I will repeat the substance of this 
final intuition: 

The one central fact in the Order of Things which 
solves all questions is — 

At this moment we were interrupted by a knock at 
the Master’s door. It was most inopportune, for he 
was on the point of the great disclosure, but common 
politeness compelled him to answer it, and as the 
step which we had heard was that of one of the softer- 
footed sex, he chose to rise from his chair and admit 
his visitor. 

This visitor was our Landlady. She was dressed 
with more than usual nicety, and her countenance 
showed clearly that she came charged with an impor¬ 
tant communication. 

— I did n’t know there was company with you, — 
said the Landlady, —but it’s jest as well. I ’ve got 
something to tell my boarders that I don’t want to tell 
them, and if I must do it, I may as well tell you all at 
once as one to a time. I ’m agoing to give up keeping 
boarders at the end of this year, — I mean come the 
end of December. 

She took out a white handkerchief, at hand in ex¬ 
pectation of what was to happen, and pressed it to 
her eyes. There was an interval of silence. The 
Master closed his book and laid it on the table. The 
Young Astronomer did not look as much surprised 
as I should have expected. I was completely taken 
aback, — I had not thought of such a sudden breaking 
up of our little circle. 


340 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

When the Landlady had recovered her composure, 
she began again: 

The Lady that’s been so long with me is going to 
a house of her own, — one she has bought back again, 
for it used to belong to her folks. It’s a beautiful 
house, and the sun shines in at the front windows all 
day long. She ’s going to be wealthy again, but it 
doos n’t make any difference in her ways. I’ve had 
boarders complain when I was doing as well as I 
knowed how for them, but I never heerd a word from 
her that was n’t as pleasant as if she’d been talking 
to the Governor’s lady. I’ve knowed what it was to 
have women-boarders that find fault, —there ’s some 
of ’em would quarrel with me and everybody at my 
table; they would quarrel with the Angel Gabriel if 
he lived in the house with ’em, and scold at him and 
tell him he was always dropping his feathers round, 
if they could n’t find anything else to bring up against 
him. 

Two other boarders of mine has given me notice 
that they was expecting to leave come the first of Jan¬ 
uary. I could fill up their places easy enough, for 
ever since that first book was wrote that called peo¬ 
ple’s attention to my boarding-house, I’ve had more 
wanting to come than I wanted to keep. 

But I’m. getting along in life, and I ain’t quite so 
rugged as I used to be. My daughter is well settled 
and my son is making his own living. I’ve done a 
good deal of hard work in my time, and I feel as if I 
had a right to a little rest. There ’s nobody knows 
what a woman that has the charge of a family goes 
through, but God Almighty that made her. I’ve 
done my best for them that I loved, and for them that 
was under my roof. My husband and my children 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 341 

was well cared for when they lived, and he and them 
little ones that I buried has white marble head-stones 
and foot-stones, and an iron fence round the lot, and 
a place left for me betwixt him and the . . . 

Some has always been good to me, — some has 
made it a little of a strain to me to get along. When 
a woman’s back aches with overworking herself to 
keep her house in shape, and a dozen mouths are 
opening at her three times a day, like them little 
young birds that split their heads open so you can 
a’most see into their empty stomachs, and one wants 
this and another wants that, and provisions is dear and 
rent is high, and nobody to look to, — then a sharp 
-word cuts, I tell you, and a hard look goes right to 
your heart. I’ve seen a boarder make a face at what 
I set before him, when I had tried to suit him jest as 
well as I knew how, and I haven’t cared to eat a 
thing myself all the rest of that day, and I’ve laid 
awake without a wink of sleep all night. And then 
when you come down the next morning all the board¬ 
ers stare at you and wonder what makes you so low- 
spirited, and why you don’t look as happy and talk 
as cheerful as one of them rich ladies that has dinner¬ 
parties, where they’ve nothing to do but give a few 
orders, and somebody comes and cooks their dinner, 
and somebody else comes and puts flowers on the 
table, and a lot of men dressed up like ministers come 
and wait on everybody, as attentive as undertakers at 
a funeral. 

And that reminds me to tell you that I’m agoing to 
live with my daughter. Her husband ’s a very nice 
man, and when he is n’t following a corpse, he ’s as 
good company as if he was a member of the city coun¬ 
cil. My son, he ’s agoing into business with the old 


342 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


Doctor he studied with, and he ’s agoing to board 
with me at my daughter’s for a while, — I suppose 
he ’ll be getting a wife before long. [This with a 
pointed look at our young friend, the Astronomer.] 

It is n’t but a little while longer that we are going 
to be together, and I want to say to you gentlemen, 
as I mean to say to the others and as I have said to 
our two ladies, that I feel more obligated to you for 
the way you ’ye treated me than I know very well how 
to put into words. Boarders sometimes expect too 
much of the ladies that provides for them. Some 
days the meals are better than other days; it can’t 
help being so. Sometimes the provision-market is n’t 
well supplied, sometimes the fire in the cooking-stove 
doesn’t burn so well as it does other days; sometimes 
the cook is n’t so lucky as she might be. And there 
is boarders who is always laying in wait for the days 
when the meals is not quite so good as they commonly 
be, to pick a quarrel with the one that is trying to 
serve them so as that they shall be satisfied. But 
you’ve all been good and kind to me. I suppose I’m 
not quite so spry and quick-sighted as I was a dozen 
years ago, when my boarder wrote that first book so 
many have asked me about. But now I ’m going to 
stop taking boarders. I don’t believe you ’ll think 
much about what I didn’t do, —because I couldn’t, 
— but remember that at any rate I tried honestly to 
serve you. I hope God will bless all that set at my 
table, old and young, rich and poor, merried and 
single, and single that hopes soon to be merried. My 
husband that’s dead and gone always believed that 
we all get to heaven sooner or later, — and sence I’ve 
grown older and buried so many that I’ve loved I’ve 
come to feel that perhaps I should meet all of them 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 343 

that I ’ve known here — or at least as many of ’em as 
I wanted to — in a better world. And though I don’t 
calculate there is any boarding-houses in heaven, I 
hope I shall some time or other meet them that has set 
round my table one year after another, all together, 
where there is no fault-finding with the food and no 
occasion for it, — and if I do meet them and you there 
— or anywhere, — if there is anything I can do for 
you . . . 

. . . Poor dear soul! Her ideas had got a little 
mixed, and her heart was overflowing, and the white 
handkerchief closed the scene with its timely and 
greatly needed service. 

— What a pity, I have often thought, that she 
came in just at that precise moment! For the old 
Master was on the point of telling us, and through 
one of us the reading world,— I mean that fraction of 
it which has reached this point of the record, — at 
any rate, of telling you, Beloved, through my pen, 
his solution of a great problem we all have to deal 
with. We were some weeks longer together, but he 
never offered to continue his reading. At length I 
ventured to give him a hint that our young friend and 
myself would both of us be greatly gratified if he 
would begin reading from his unpublished page where 
he had left off. 

— No, sir,—he said,—better not, better not. 
That which means so much to me, the writer, might 
be a disappointment, or at least a puzzle, to you, the 
listener. Besides, if you ’ll take my printed book and 
be at the trouble of thinking over what it says, and 
put that with what you’ve heard me say, and then 
make those comments and reflections which will be 
suggested to a mind in so many respects like mine as 


344 THE POET AT THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 

is your own, — excuse my good opinion of myself, — 
(It is a high compliment to me, I replied) you will 
perhaps find you have the elements of the formula 
and its consequences which I was about to read you. 
It’s quite as well to crack your own filberts as to bor¬ 
row the use of other people’s teeth. I think we will 
wait awhile before we pour out the Elixir Vitce. 

— To tell the honest truth, I suspect the Master 
has found out that his formula does not hold water 
quite so perfectly as he was thinking, so long as he 
kept it to himself, and never thought of imparting it 
to anybody else. The very minute a thought is 
threatened with publicity it seems to shrink towards 
mediocrity, as I have noticed that a great pumpkin, 
the wonder of a village, seemed to lose at least a third 
of its dimensions between the field where it grew and 
the cattle-show fair-table, where it took its place with 
other enormous pumpkins from other wondering vil¬ 
lages. But however that may be, I shall always re¬ 
gret that I had not the opportunity of judging for 
myself how completely the Master’s formula, which, 
for him, at least, seemed to have solved the great 
problem, would have accomplished that desirable end 
for me. 

The Landlady’s announcement of her intention to 
give up keeping boarders was heard with regret by all 
who met around her table. The Member of the 
Haouse inquired of me whether I could tell him if the 
Lamb Tahvern was kept well abaout these times. He 
knew that members from his place used to stop there, 
but he had n’t heerd much abaout it of late years. — 
I had to inform him that that fold of rural inno¬ 
cence had long ceased offering its hospitalities to the 
legislative flock. He found refuge at last, I have 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 345 

learned, in a great public house in the northern sec¬ 
tion of the city, where, as he said, the folks all went 
up stairs in a rat-trap, and the last I heard of him 
was looking out of his somewhat elevated attic-window 
in a northwesterly direction in hopes that he might 
perhaps get a sight of the Grand Monadnock, a 
mountain in New Hampshire which I have myself 
seen from the top of Bunker Hill Monument. 

The Member of the Haouse seems to have been 
more in a hurry to find a new resting-place than the 
other boarders. By the first of January, however, 
our whole company was scattered, never to meet again 
around the board where we had been so long together. 

The Lady moved to the house where she had passed 
many of her prosperous years. It had been occupied 
by a rich family who had taken it nearly as it stood, 
and as the pictures had been dusted regularly, and the 
books had never been handled, she found everything 
in many respects as she had left it, and in some points 
improved, for the rich people did not know what else 
to do, and so they spent money without stint on their 
house and its adornments, by all of which she could not 
help profiting. I do not choose to give the street and 
number of the house where she lives, but a great many 
poor people know very well where it is, and as a mat¬ 
ter of course the rich ones roll up to her door in their 
carriages by the dozen every fine Monday while any¬ 
body is in town. 

It is whispered that our two young folks are to be 
married before another season, and that the Lady has 
asked them to come and stay with her for a while. 
Our Scheherezade is to write no more stories. It is 
astonishing to see what a change for the better in her 
aspect a few weeks of brain-rest and heart’s ease have 


346 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

wrought in her. I clouht very much whether she ever 
returns to literary labor. The work itself was almost 
heart-breaking, but the effect upon her of the sneers 
and cynical insolences of the literary rough who came 
at her in mask and brass knuckles was to give her 
what I fear will be a lifelong disgust against any writ¬ 
ing for the public, especially in any of the periodi¬ 
cals. I am not sorry that she should stop writing, but 
I am sorry that she should have been silenced in such 
a rude way. I doubt, too, whether the Young Astron¬ 
omer will pass the rest of his life in hunting for com¬ 
ets and planets. I think he has found an attraction 
that will call him down from the celestial luminaries to 
a light not less pure and far less remote. And I am 
inclined to believe that the best answer to many of 
those questions which have haunted him and found 
expression in his verse will be reached by a very dif¬ 
ferent channel from that of lonely contemplation, — 
the duties, the cares, the responsible realities of a 
life drawn out of itself by the power of newly awak¬ 
ened instincts and affections. The double star was 
prophetic, — I thought it would be. 

The Register of Deeds is understood to have been 
very handsomely treated by the boarder who owes her 
good fortune to his sagacity and activity. He has 
engaged apartments at a very genteel boarding-house 
not far from the one where we have all been living. 
The Salesman found it a simple matter to transfer 
himself to an establishment over the way; he had very 
little to move, and required very small accommoda¬ 
tions. 

The Capitalist, however, seems to have felt it im¬ 
possible to move without ridding himself of a part 
at least of his encumbrances. The community was 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 347 

startled by the announcement that a citizen who did 
not wish his name to he known had made a free gift 
of a large sum of money — it was in tens of thousands 
— to an institution of long standing and high charac¬ 
ter in the city of which he was a quiet resident. The 
source of such a gift could not long be kept secret. It 
was our economical, not to say parsimonious Capi¬ 
talist who had done this noble act, and the poor man 
had to skulk through back streets and keep out of 
sight, as if he were a show character in a travelling 
caravan, to avoid the acknowledgments of his liberal¬ 
ity, which met him on every hand and put him fairly 
out of countenance. 

That Boy has gone, in virtue of a special invitation, 
to make a visit of indefinite length at the house of the 
father of the older boy, whom we know by the name 
of Johnny. Of course he is having a good time, for 
Johnny’s father is full of fun, and tells firstrate sto¬ 
ries, and if neither of the boys gets his brains kicked 
out by the pony, or blows himself up with gunpowder, 
or breaks through the ice and gets drowned, they will 
have a fine time of it this winter. 

The Scarabee could not bear to remove his collec¬ 
tions, and the old Master was equally unwilling to 
disturb his books. It was arranged, therefore, that 
they should keep their apartments until the new tenant 
should come into the house, when, if they were satis¬ 
fied with her management, they would continue as her 
boarders. 

The last time I saw the Scarabee he was still at 
work on the meloe question. He expressed himself 
very pleasantly towards all of us, his fellow-board- 
ers, and spoke of the kindness and consideration with 
which the Landlady had treated him when he had 


348 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

been straitened at times for want of means. Espe¬ 
cially he seemed to be interested in our young couple 
who were soon to be united. His tired old eyes glis¬ 
tened as he asked about them, — could it be that their 
little romance recalled some early vision of his own? 
However that may be, he got up presently and went 
to a little box in which, as he said, he kept some 
choice specimens. He brought to me in his hand 
something which glittered. It was an exquisite dia¬ 
mond beetle. 

— If you could get that to her, — he said, — they 
tell me that ladies sometimes wear them in their hair. 
If they are out of fashion, she can keep it till after 
they ’re married, and then perhaps after a while there 
may be — you know — you know what I mean — there 
may be — larvce , that’s what I’m thinking there may 
be, and they ’ll like to look at it. 

— As he got out the word larvce, a faint sense of 
the ridiculous seemed to take hold of the Scarabee, 
and for the first and only time during my acquaint¬ 
ance with him a slight attempt at a smile showed itself 
on his features. It was barely perceptible and gone 
almost as soon as seen, yet I am pleased to put it on 
record that on one occasion at least in his life the 
Scarabee smiled. 

The old Master keeps adding notes and reflections 
and new suggestions to his interleaved volume, but I 
doubt if he ever gives them to the public. The study 
he has proposed to himself does not grow easier the 
longer it is pursued. The whole Order of Things can 
hardly be completely unravelled in any single person’s 
lifetime, and I suspect he will have to adjourn the 
final stage of his investigations to that more luminous 
realm where the Landlady hopes to rejoin the com- 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 349 


pany of boarders who are nevermore to meet around 
her cheerful and well-ordered table. 

The curtain has now fallen, and I show myself a 
moment before it to thank my audience and say fare¬ 
well. The second comer is commonly less welcome 
than the first, and the third makes but a rash venture. 
I hope I have not wholly disappointed those who have 
been so kind to my predecessors. 

To you, Beloved, who have never failed to cut the 
leaves which hold my record, who have never nodded 
over its pages, who have never hesitated in your al¬ 
legiance, who have greeted me with unfailing smiles 
and part from me with unfeigned regrets, to you I 
look my last adieu as I bow myself out of sight, trust¬ 
ing my poor efforts to your always kind remembrance. 


EPILOGUE TO THE BREAKFAST-TABLE SERIES: 

AUTOCRAT— PROFESSOR — POET. 

AT A BOOKSTORE. 

Anno Domini 1972. 

A crazy bookcase, placed before 
A low-price dealer’s open door ; 

Therein arrayed in broken rows 
A ragged crew of rhyme and prose, 

The homeless vagrants, waifs and strays 
Whose low estate this line betrays 
(Set forth the lesser birds to lime) 

YOUR CHOICE AMONG THESE BOOKS , 1 DIME ! 

Ho ! dealer ; for its motto’s sake 
This scarecrow from the shelf I take ; 

Three starveling volumes bound in one, 

Its covers warping in the sun. 


350 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


Methinks it hath a musty smell, 

I like its flavor none too well, 

But Yorick’s brain was far from dull, 

Though Hamlet pah !’d, and dropped his skull. 

Why, here comes rain ! The sky grows dark,« 
Was that the roll of thunder ? Hark ! 

The shop affords a safe retreat, 

A chair extends its welcome seat, 

The tradesman has a civil look 

(I’ve paid, impromptu, for my book), 

The clouds portend a sudden shower, — 

I ’ll read my purchase for an hour. 

What have I rescued from the shelf ? 

A Boswell, writing out himself ! 

For though he changes dress and name, 

The man beneath is still the same, 

Laughing or sad, by fits and starts. 

One actor in a dozen parts, 

And whatsoe’er the mask may be, 

The voice assures us, This is he. % 

I say not this to cry him down ; 

I find my Shakespeare in his clown, 

His rogues the self-same parent own ; 

Nay ! Satan talks in Milton’s tone ! 

Where’er the ocean inlet strays, 

The salt sea wave its source betrays, 

Where’er the queen of summer blows, 

She tells the zephyr, “ I’m the rose ! ’* 

And his is not the playwright’s page j 
His table does not ape the stage ; 

What matter if the figures seen 
Are only shadows on a screen, 

He finds in them his lurking thought, 

And on their lips the words he sought, 

Like one who sits before the keys 
And plays a tune himself to please. 


THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


And was he noted in his day ? 

Read, flattered, honored ? Who shall say ? 
Poor wreck of time the wave has cast 
To find a peaceful shore at last, 

Once glorying in thy gilded name 
And freighted deep with hopes of fame, 

Thy leaf is moistened with a tear, 

The first for many a long, long year ! 

For be it more or less of art 
That veils the lowliest human heart 
Where passion throbs, where friendship glows, 
Where pity’s tender tribute flows, 

Where love has lit its fragrant fire, 

And sorrow quenched its vain desire, 

For me the altar is divine, 

Its flame, its ashes, — all are mine ! 

And thou, my brother, as I look 
And see thee pictured in thy book, 

Thy years on every page confessed 
In shadows lengthening from the west, 

Thy glance that wanders, as it sought 
Some freshly opening flower of thought, 

Thy hopeful nature, light and free, 

I start to find myself in thee ! 

Come, vagrant, outcast, wretch forlorn 
In leather jerkin stained and torn, 

Whose talk has filled my idle hour 
And made me half forget the shower, 

I ’ll do at least as much for you, 

Your coat I ’ll patch, your gilt renew, 

Read you, — perhaps, — some other time. 

Not bad, my bargain! Price one dime f 




INDEX, 


♦ 


Ablution, missionaries of, 314. 

Abraham, burial place of, 331. 

Accidents of life confounded with life 
itself, 296. 

Act, an, to make the poor richer by 
making the rich poorer, 3. 

Actors change less than other people, 
329. 

Acupuncture, instrument for, 121, 122. 

Adam and Eve, creation of, 83. 

Addison’s disease, 67. 

Advertisement, trap to obtain for new 
book, 302. 

Advice to young men and women with 
literary aspirations, 158. 

Affinities, elective, 129, 130. 

Age in the eyes of youth, 14. 

Alchemy, old books of, 27. 

Alexander the Great, coins of, 111. 

Allegiance to what is highest in one’s 
own nature, 270. 

“ Amatoors,” the Scarabee has no fear 
of, 250. 

America, lack of permanent homes in, 

11 . 

Americans like cuckoos, 10; the talking 
dynasty hard upon, 265. 

Angelina’s verses, how to treat them, 
153. 

Angels might learn from human beings, 
248. 

Angier, Joseph, poem in memory of, 
115. 

Animus tuus oculus, a freshman’s Lat¬ 
in. 302. 

Ankle, wonderful effects of breaking a 
bone in, 97. 

Antagonism, laws of, 130. 

Anthropology. See Man. 

Antiquity of many modern customs, 
322. 

Apologies for human nature, 20. 

Arago, 138. 

Articulated sound, fascination of, 46,47. 

Artists need freedom from disturbance, 
100; their idiosyncrasies, 102. 

Ashburnham, Lord, possessor of the 
ring of Tliothmes III., 111. 

Aspect of things changes entirely in a 
single generation, 328. 


Athos, Mount, monks of, 106. 

Attention long fixed on a single object, 
strange effects of, 107. 

Attraction, laws of, 130. 

Aunt Tabitha, 87. 

Authors repeat in conversation what 
they have said in their books, 206 ; 
compliments to authors, 207 ; fate of 
presentation copies of their books, 
301 ; they should read friendly and 
unfriendly criticism, 303. 

Authorship, rewards of, 160. 

Average, laws of, 130. 

Averages, human, tolerable steadiness 
of, 221 et seq. 

Aversions, personal, indulgence in, 333. 

Baby’s fingers, 51. 

Ballet dancing, 95, 96. 

Bambino, 308. 

Bancroft, George, his comment on Cal¬ 
vin, 184. 

Barnum, P. T., 127. 

Bee-parasites, 76. 

Beehive, giant, planing-mill compared 
to, 325. 

Beliefs in which we are trained indeli¬ 
ble, 327. 

Biography, cost of being its subject, 
163 et seq. 

Blackstone, 314. » 

Blair’s Chronology, 83. 

Boarding-house fever, 64. 

Boarding-houses, their inmates, 244; 
trials of keeping, 341. 

Book advertisement, trap to obtain, 302. 

Book infirmary should be attached to 
every library, 25 ; the master’s, 243. 

Books, fate of presentation copies of, 
301 ; like leaky boats on a sea of wis¬ 
dom, 302. 

Bores may be good talkers, 301. 

Boston Common, 313, 315; Frog pond. 
314 ; streets, 324; graveyards, 329. 

Boyle, Robert, his approach to modern 
philosophers, 216. 

Breakfast-table series, Epilogue to, 349. 

Bronze skin, 67. 

Browne, Simon, the man without a 
soul, dedication of his Answer to 




354 


INDEX 


Tindal’s “ Christianity as old as the 
Creation,” 215. 

“ Bub,” abbreviation of Beelzebub, 7. 

Bunker Hill monument, 95, 148, 149, 
166 ; man of the monument, 151, 166. 

Bunyan, John, quotation from, 276; 
anticipates Galton and the Professor, 
303. 

Caddice-worm, 211. 

Calvin, criticised by Bancroft, 184. 

Candlestick, seven-branched, 332. 

Cannibalism, 150. 

Canute, King, 187 , 267. 

Capitalist, his economies, 40 ; treated by 
Hr. B. Franklin, 253 ; his unexpected 
generosity, 346. 

Capsulae suprarenales, 68. 

Caput mortuum, 281. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 265. 

Castles, Ruskin’s aversion to a country 
without, 11. 

Catullus, his story of the cockney Ro¬ 
man, 324. 

Celebrities of to-day all look alike, 103. 

Cephalalgia, 127. 

Cerebration, passive, 316. 

Character affected by soil, 21 ; sudden 
development of, 306. 

Children modified by the soil of the re¬ 
gion in which they are born, 20, 21; 
their likeness to animals, 82. 

Chronological History of New England , 
by Thomas Prince, 121. 

Church-going, its humanizing effect, 193. 

Citadel of belief, the fewer its outworks 
the better, 319. 

City life, gain to health from, 278. 

Civilization, power of over natural 
forces, 271. 

Clergymen, varieties of, 16, 17 ; charac¬ 
teristics of, 125. 

Coarse-fibred people, 275. 

Cockney, Roman, 324. 

Coincidences in manners and speech of 
antiquity and our own time, 323. 

Coins of Alexander the Great, 111. 

Coleridge, Samuel, 263, 265. 

Common, Boston, as a place for study¬ 
ing the heavens, 313; tradition re¬ 
garding one of its paths, 315. 

Commonplace people sometimes have a 
deep inner life, 204, 205. 

Common sense and science, 120. 

Comparative theology as necessary as 
comparative anatomy, 149. 

Compliments, some advice in regard to 
paying them, 208. 

Condescension, graciousness mistaken 
for, 55. 

Conscience, paralysis of, 268. 

Conscious life the aim and end of crea¬ 
tion, 105. 

Consciousness, Huai. See Huai con¬ 
sciousness. 

Contemplation, necessary conditions of, 
106. 


Contradiction may turn a good talker 
into an insufferable bore, 301. 

Conversation, commonplace character 
of ordinary, 246. 

Conversationalist, discomfort of being 
thought one, 44. 

Cooper, the actor, 329. 

Corain, Captain, and his sinking ship, 
171. 

Country, eye for possessed by military 
men, 105. 

Country life, some dangers of, 278. 

Cowper, his mental neuralgia, 101. 

Creation, conscious life its aim and end, 
105. 

Creative power demands freedom from 
disturbance, 100. 

Criticism based on personal feeling, 85; 
needlessness of much of it, 152 ; that 
which falls upon the critics them¬ 
selves, 153 ; private criticism, 153 et seq. 

Cuckoos, resemblance of Americans to, 

10 . 

Customs, modern, antiquity of many, 

322. 

Cutis aenea, 67. 

Cuvier, 240. 

Baemons, 127. 

Bancing, 97. 

Bar win’s theory, 82, 83; secret of the 
interest in, 305. 

Havid, tomb of, 332. 

Havidson sisters, effect upon one of 
them of the singing of Moore’s melo¬ 
dies, 313. 

Beadheads apt to have lively appetites, 
281. 

Bejazet, Mile., the actress, 329. 

Bermestes lardarius, 93. 

Bevelopment sudden in some charac¬ 
ters, 306. 

Bevout disposition and weak constitu¬ 
tion, correlation between, 303. 

Biscussion, gain in freedom of, 185 ; dis¬ 
cussions, religious, worth and dangers 
of, 187 et seq. 

Bisease, a manifestation of the vital 
processes, 305. 

Bistinctions, social, 57. 

Boctor B. Franklin, his education, 38; 
he is consulted by the Poet, 64; his 
office, 65 ; the examination, 66; treats 
the Capitalist, 253. 

Boctors, old preferred to young, 118; 
young doctors start with much pro¬ 
fessional but little practical know¬ 
ledge, 123; doctors in this country 
have less culture than lawyers and 
ministers, 126; doctors in earlier 
days, 305. 

Bogmatists, 262 et seq. 

Bouble star, 73, 139, 317, 346. 

Boubt, spiritual, 148 ; age of, 194. 

Brudgery of writing, 299. 

Bual consciousness, 81,206,207,227,243. 

I Buff, Mrs., the actress, 329. 




INDEX 


355 


Duty of accepting good fortune when it 
defrauds no one, 293. 

Dynasty, the talking, 263; hard on 
Americans, 265. 

Education, theological, should include 
pathology and toxicology, 304. 

Egg, the Creator’s private studio, 106. 

Egyptian obelisks, 149. 

Elective affinities, 129, 130. 

Ellsler, Fanny, 95. 

Elms, 19; great elm on Boston Com¬ 
mon, 313. 

Encouragement to young writers, 159. 

Enforced economics, 296. 

English sparrow, 314. 

Epidemic of thinking, 269. 

Epilogue to the Breakfast-table series, 
349. 

Equation, eye for, 105. 

Experts, our pride in the superiority of, 
243. 

External conditions valued too highly, 
296. 

Eye for an equation, 105. 

Eye for country possessed by military 
men, 105. 

Eyebrows, line between the, 52. 

Faber, Peter John, 27. 

Facsimile of each of us to be found 
somewhere, 36. 

Facts as mental food, 174 ; reluctance 
to accept those which throw doubt 
upon cherished beliefs, 185. 

Faith stronger in women than in men, 
186. 

False sentiment, 136. 

Fame, desire for, 160, 163 ; penalty of, 
161, 162. 

Fantasia , 61. 

Fascination of spoken sounds, 46, 47. 

Fate of books given by authors to their 
friends, 301. 

Fear, power of, 127 ; fear, superstitious, 
not easily banished, 328. 

Feeders for the mind, 80. 

Firebugs, political, 3. 

Fish which stopped the leak in Captain 
Corain’s ship, 171. 

Flies, house, 244 et seq. 

Forgotten, pleasure of being, 161. 

Foster, John, of Brighton, 14. 

Fox, Rev. Jabez, of Woburn, 13. 

Frailties of the rich, 296. 

Franklin, Benjamin, his look, 6 ; as re¬ 
ferred to by Dr. Johnson, 265. 

Franklin, Dr. B. See Doctor B. Frank¬ 
lin. 

Freaks of nature. See Monstrosities. 

Free discussion, in scientific questions, 
182 ; gain in, 185. 

Freedom from disturbance demanded 
by creative power, 100. 

Freedom of thought difficult to recon¬ 
cile with respect for the convictions 
of others, 307. 


Frenchman, the eccentric, 225. 

Friends, unexpected, the result of sym¬ 
pathetic disposition, 154. 

Friendship, no time for among natural¬ 
ists, 249. 

Frog pond on Boston Common, 314. 

Ga’ton, Francis, 303. 

Gambrel-roofed house, the Poet’s recol¬ 
lections of, 10 et seq.; its unpreten¬ 
tiousness, 12 ; its tenants, 13, 18 ; its 
clerical visitors, 14 et seq. ; its trees, 
19; its garden, 20 et seq.; its out¬ 
look, 22 ; its cellar, 23 ; its garret, 24 
et seq. ; the old books of the garret, 
26; its historic associations, 28 ; its 
later use, 28; its romances, 29; its 
improvements, 30. 

Genius for religion, 128. 

Ghosts, no opportunities for in modem 
houses, 23. 

Gibbon’s story of the monks of Mount 
Athos, 106. 

Girls. See Women. 

Gods of the heathen, servants of to-day, 
271. 

Gold, the charm and power of, 255 et 
seq. 

Good manners, worth of, 58. 

Good Samaritan, 306. 

Gospel of Saint Petroleum, 40. 

Grace of God not private property, 327. 

Grace opposed to nature in the scholas¬ 
tic theology, 304. 

Graciousness mistaken for condescen¬ 
sion, 55. 

Grafted trees, 165. 

Grand manner, 334. 

Graveyards change their outward aspect 
less than other places, 329. 

Great elm on Boston Common, 313. 

Great organ in Boston Music Hall, 95. 

Guilt, heritable, doctrine of, 268. 

Gwyllyn, David ap, 325. 

Gymnotus, 45. 

Halford, Sir Henry, 102. 

Hall, Bishop, prefers nature . before 
grace in the election of a wife, 304. 

Hannibal, 300. 

Harris, Thaddeus Mason, D. D., died 
1847, 15. 

Harvard College: Harvard hall, 10; 
Massachusetts hall, 10 ; Holden chap¬ 
el, 10. 

Harvard hall. See Harvard College. 

Harvey, William, 106. 

Herbert, George, 110. 

Heritable guilt, doctrine of, 268. 

Herschel, his discovery of Georgium 
Sidus, 218; his telescope, 219. 

High Church service, responses in, 128. 

Holden Chapel. See Harvard College. 

Holding the tongue, significance of in 
women, 300. 

Holmes house, Cambridge. See Gam¬ 
brel-roofed house. 



356 


INDEX 


Homer, quotation from, 47. 

Homer, Jonathan, his external resem¬ 
blance to Voltaire, 15. 

Homes, permanent, lack of >n America, 
11 . 

Homesick in Heaven , 32. 

Horace, 323. 

House-flies, 244 et seq. 

Human averages, tolerable steadiness 
of, 221 et seq. 

Human beings raised under glass, 278. 

Human body, structure of has suggested 
many modern contrivances, 322. 

Human experiences, similarity of, 31. 

Human nature, apologies for, 20. 

Humanity, revival of, 305; virtues of, 
306; of more importance than any 
belief, 327. 

Humanizing effect of church-going, 193. 

Hutchinson, Mrs. Ann, 224. 

Ideas, transplanted, 146; association of 
by their accidental cohesion rather 
than by their vital affinities, 289. 

Idiosyncrasies of artists, 102. 

India-rubber, 322. 

Infirmary for invalid books, 25; the 
Master’s, 213. 

Inheritance of the world belongs to the 
phlegmatic people, 41. 

Instincts, inherited, their development, 
166. 

Intellects, varieties of, 43. 

Intellectual invalids, 17. 

Intellectual irritation produced by rub¬ 
bing against other people’s prejudices, 
6 . 

Intellectual life of race gains nothing 
from unquestioning minds, 270. 

Intellectual opium-eating, 99. 

Intelligence, general diffusion of, 302. 

Interrupted literary work, supposed 
case of, 8. 

Interviewing one’s self, 1. 

Invalids, intellectual, 17. 

Inventions, recent, anticipated in the 
human body, 322. 

Ireson, Flood, 323. 

Irving, Edward, 183. 

Irving, Washington, quotation from his 
Knickerbocker’s history regarding 
New York streets, 324. 

Japanese figures with points for acu¬ 
puncture, 121, 122. 

Johnson, Samuel, his estimate of scien¬ 
tists, 263; what he might say on re¬ 
ceiving a cablegram, 264; his refer¬ 
ence to Franklin, 265. 

Johnny, That Boy’s friend, his first ap¬ 
pearance, 281; his family history, 
283. 

Joke-blindness, 247. 

Justice, human conception of, 270. 

Keats’s Endymion , 306. 

Kellogg, Elijah, 15. 


Knickerbocker’s history, quotation from 
regarding New York streets, 324. 

Knowledge, its specialization, 265; its 
advance, 267; pursuit of, difficult, 307. 

Laboring classes, a suggestion for, 299. 

Lady, The, her history, 54; her friend¬ 
ship for Scheherezade, 85 ; her letter to 
the Poet, 187 et seq. ; her acquaintance 
with the Register of Deeds, 196; her 
growing interest in him, 289; this in¬ 
timacy explained, 289; her good for¬ 
tune, 292. 

Lamb tavern, 344. 

Landlady, personal appearance, 37; 
her family, 38; her fitness for matri¬ 
mony, 38, 39; fame of her house 
brought superior people, 48; her mis¬ 
take regarding complementary colors, 
140; character of her conversation, 
252; probable characteristics of her 
deceased husband, 253; her reminis¬ 
cences, 283; tells the story of The 
Lady’s good fortune, 290 et seq. 

Langdon, Samuel, 28. 

Language, management of in poetry, 
98; its inadequacy for expression of 
spiritual ideas, 183; inexactness of, 
217. 

Latreille, Pierre Andrd, 240. 

Lawyers unsympathetic, 124. 

Left-handedness, moral, 222. 

Letters, Red republic of, 10. 

Levelling process, 4, 5. 

Liability of misjudging our fellows, 255. 

Liberty to dislike us accorded a certain 
number of people, 333. 

Libraries, book infirmary should be at¬ 
tached to, 25; use of in many fine 
houses, 209; how they should grow, 
211 et seq. 

Life, conscious, the aim and end of crea¬ 
tion, 105. 

Life, fulness of to the poet, 107 ; chances 
of better in cities than in towns, 279; 
its accidents confounded with life it¬ 
self, 296. 

Likes and dislikes, metaphysics of, 71; 
ground of, 333 et seq. 

Line between the eyebrows, 52. 

Literary adviser, confidential, much ex¬ 
pected of him, 158. 

Literary aspirants, difficulties of dealing 
with, 155 et seq. 

Literary police, 152. 

Literary roughs with brass knuckles, 
275, 346. 

Local influences, how greatly they affect 
the human organization, 277. 

Louis, XIV., anecdote of, 185. 

Love-cure believed in by women, 272. 

Lovers as talkers, 95. 

Machpelali, cave of, 331. 

Maine produces a large proportion of 
our natural nobility, 276. 

Man, study of, 183, 184, 268; it needs a 




INDEX 


357 



Man of letters, 52 ; his air of superiority, 
151; leaves the boarding-house, 202. 

Man of the monument. See Bunker 
Hill Monument. 

Man without a soul. See Browne, Si¬ 
mon. 

Manhood, occidental, based on self-re¬ 
spect, 270; oriental, based on self- 
abasement, ibid. 

Mantis religiosa, 239. 

Map, sanitary, needed of every State in 
the Union, 280. 

Marblehead, people of, like the Phsea- 
cians, 323. 

Massachusetts Hall. See Harvard Col¬ 
lege. 

Master, his prejudices, 6 ; his originality, 
41; his experiments, 174 et seq.; his 
library, 210 et seq.; liis book infirm¬ 
ary, 213 ; his book, 221; his ambition, 
262; his physiological observations, 
277 ; his reasons for having written 
books, 319 et seq.; begins to tell the 
story of his life, and to disclose the 
central fact in the order of things, 
337 et seq. ; is interrupted by the 
Landlady, 339. 

Mastigophori, the whip-holders, 274. 

Matchless Mitchel. See Mitchel, Jona¬ 
than. 

Mathematical ability lacking in many 
strong minds, 104. 

Mather, Cotton, 14, 327. 

Mather, Increase, 224. 

Medicated.novels, 26. 

Mediocrity often given to a thought by 
publicity, 344. 

“ Member of the Haouse,” 1 ; his native 
place, 7. 

Memory, curiosities of, 219; pleasures 
of, 328. 

Mental ballast, 321. 

Military men have an eye for country, 
105. 

Milton, John, 91, 92. 

Mind, feeders for the, 80. 

Minds with skylights, 42; different 
minds move like the different pieces 
on a chess-board, 220 ; non-clerical 
minds, 257. 

Ministers. See Clergymen ; Priests. 

Misers, Visions of, 255 et seq. 

Misery that we smile at, 84. 

Misjudgment, liability to, 255. 

Missionaries of ablution, 314. 

Mississippi River, 335. 

Missouri River, 335. 

Mrs. Midas Goldenrod, her visits to the 
Lady, 55; her likes and dislikes, 294. 

Mitchel, Jonathan, 326. 

Mithra, 326. 

Modem customs, antiquity of many, 
322. 

Modern houses afford no opportunities 
for ghosts, 23. 


Monadnock, Mount, 345. 

Monks of Mount Athos, 106. 

Monstrosities subject to laws, 223; the 
Poet’s fondness for, 229. 

Moon as seen through the telescope by 
the boarding-house party, 137 et seq. 

Moon-hoax of 1835, 138. 

Moore, Thomas, 313. 

Moral left-handedness, 222. 

Moral order of things, reason for believ* 
ing in, 221. 

Moral reflections, we often find our own 
anticipated by others, 325. 

Moral teratology, 225. 

Morbus Addisonii, 67. 

Morrissey, John, 45. 

Mothers, hardships of, 340. 

Muscarium, home for house-flies, 244 
et seq. 

Music-pounding, 62. 

Natural forces well under control of 
civilization, 271. 

Natural man, 234. 

Natural nobility, 276. 

Naturalists, have no time for friend¬ 
ships, 249. 

Nature and grace, 304. 

Nature, study of, its difficulties, 307. 

Nebular theory, 180. 

New York streets, quotation from 
Knickerbocker’s history regarding, 
324. 

New Yorkers, two, their reminiscences, 
330. 

Newgate calendar, 222, 265. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, liis mathematical 
power, 105. 

Nightingale, Florence, her saying about 
music, 62. 

Nobility, natural, 276. 

Novels, medicated. 26; fate of, 112. 

Obelisks, Egyptian, 149. 

Observatory, visit of the boarding-house 
party to, 131 et seq.; description of, 
133 ; solemnity of, 134. 

Occasional talkers, 266. 

Occidental manhood based on self-re¬ 
spect, 270. 

Octavia on hearing Virgil’s verses, 312. 

Odyssey, 323. 

Old people are monsters to little ones, 
14; worth of their reminiscences, 
169. 

One, two and three story intellects, 43. 

Opium-eating, intellectual, 99. 

Order of Things, the Master’s specialty, 
41. 

Oriental manhood based on self-abase¬ 
ment, 270. 

Ornaments, personal, as reminders of 
the New Jerusalem, 295. 

Osgood, David, minister of Medford, 
14. 

Outworks to the citadel of belief, the 
fewer the better, 319. 





358 


INDEX 


Palladium Spagyricum, P. J. Faber’s, 
27. 

Parable of the Pharisee and Publican, 
lesson of, 335. 

Passive cerebration, 316. 

Pathological piety, 303. 

Pathology as part of theological educa¬ 
tion, 304. 

Pearson, Eliphalet, 13, 18. 

Pediculus melittse, 74, 75. 

People who are too glad to see us, 334. 

Peril escaped makes a great story-teller 
of a common person, 266. 

Permanent homes, lack of in America, 11. 

Personal aversions, indulgence in, 333. 

Personality of the poet, 109. 

Petroleum, Saint, gospel of, 40. 

Phseacians of three thousand years ago, 
resemblance to Marbleheaders of Ire- 
son’s day, 323. 

Pharisee and Publican, lesson of the 
parable, 335. 

Phlegmatic people, inheritance of the 
world belongs to them, 41. 

Phyllum siccifolium, 240. 

Physiology, laws of not altered by re¬ 
publicanism, 276. 

Piety, pathological, 303. 

Piozzi, Madame, 186, 325. 

Pitch-pine Yankees, 276. 

Planing-mill, resemblance to a bee-hive, 
325. 

Pleasure of being forgotten, 161. 

Pleasures of memory, 328. 

Poem, each one represents a great ex¬ 
penditure of vital force, 97, 98. 

Poetry a luxury, not a necessity, 100. 

Poets, their inner nature, 11; their 
knowledge of the subjects with which 
they deal, 72, 73; those who never 
write verses the best talkers, 94; 
treated as privileged persons, 99 ; all 
real ones artists, 100; concessions 
should be made to their idiosyncra¬ 
sies, 101; personality of, 109 ; fond¬ 
ness for reading their own composi¬ 
tions to others, 202; their non-clerical 
minds, 257. 

Police, literary, 152. 

Political firebugs, 3. 

Pope, quotation from an epistle of his 
to Addison, 111. 

Popgun, That Boy’s, its first appear¬ 
ance, 63 ; its last appearance, 236; its 
efficiency, 237. 

Poplar, Lombardy, 19. 

Power, creative, demands freedom from 
disturbance, 100. 

Power, feared only when it cannot be 
mastered, 271. 

Prejudices, their value, 6; intellectual 
irritation produced by rubbing against 
other people’s prejudices, 6. 

Pride, spiritual, warning against, 336. 

Priests and ministers, 125. 

Prince, Thomas, 121. 

Private property cannot include matters 


of universal interest, 271; private 
property in thought, 303. 

Publicity often gives a thought medioc¬ 
rity, 344. 

Queen of Sheba, 322. 

Reader, every writer of individuality 
may expect to have one, 36, 37. 

Readers who have no libraries of their 
own, 209. 

Red republic of letters, 10. 

Red sorrel, 22. 

Register of deeds, his daily life, 60; 
his investigations, 168 ; discussion as 
to whether he is a superfluous person, 
170; his interest in the Lady, 289; the 
intimacy explained, 289 et seq. 

Religion, genius for, 128 ; not an intel¬ 
lectual luxury, 190; need of, 193 et 
seq.; does not rid a man of his natu¬ 
ral qualities, 304. 

Religious discussions, worth and dan¬ 
gers of, 187 et seq. 

Reporters, how they make up their re¬ 
ports, 3. 

Republic of letters, red, 10. 

Republicanism does not alter the laws 
of physiology, 276. 

Responses in High Church service, 128. 

Reverence, spirit of should be cultivated 
in young people, 195; should begin 
with self-respect, 270. 

Revival of humanity, 305. 

Rewards of authorship, 160. 

Rhyme as a narcotic, 99. 

Rhymes, paucity of the language in, 72, 
73. 

Rhyming and clever writing, capacity 
for, often mistaken for extraordinary 
endowment, 155. 

Rich, frailties of, 296. 

Right of reentry released, case of, 293. 

Ring, found by Thaddeus M. Harris, 
D. D., 15 ; ring of Thothmes III., 111. 

Robinson, Dr., 332. 

Rogers, Samuel, 330. 

Ruskin, his aversion to a country with¬ 
out castles, 11. 

Saint Petroleum, gospel of, 40. 

Salem witchcraft, 326. 

Salesman, 60; why he does not talk 
more, 205. 

Sanitary map of every State in the 
Union needed, 280. 

Sappho, 110. 

Scarabee, 49 ; receives a visit from the 
Master and the Poet, 238 et seq. ; ab¬ 
sorption in his studies, 244; his re¬ 
semblance to his beetles, 248 ; prefers 
spiders to men, 250; gift to Schehere- 
zade, 347. 

Scliehevezade, her personal appearance, 
52 ; her stories, 53; her unfriendly 
critics, 83; she looks at the double¬ 
star, 140; her sympathy for the Young 




INDEX. 


359 


Astronomer, 141; the lessons in as¬ 
tronomy, 234 et seq.; her conspiracy 
with That Boy discovered, 236 ; change 
in her manner, 297 ; effect of absence 
of mind upon her stories, 300; effect 
of the Young Astronomer’s poem upon 
her, 313 ; abandons story-writing, 346. 

Science and common sense, 120; the 
disturbing facts of science, 180 et 
seq.; change of feeling regarding 
these facts, 181; humility of science, 
185. 

Scientific men, Dr. Johnson’s estimate 
of, 263. 

Scientific questions, free discussion of, 
182. 

Scientific wrappers, 123. 

Self-abasement the basis of Oriental 
manhood, 270. 

Self-respect the basis of reverence and 
Occidental manhood, 270.. 

Sense of superiority to our fellow-crea¬ 
tures, 273. 

Sentimentality better than affectation 
of superiority to human weakness, 
136. 

Seven-branched golden candlestick, 332. 

Sewall, Samuel, 14. 

Shenstone, quotation from, 328. 

Shirley, James, 110. 

Siamese twins, 223. 

Simonides, 110. 

Sin a function, not an entity, 306, 307. 

Singers, immediate triumphs of, 113. 

Singletary, Jonathan, quotes Jonathan 
Mitcliel, 326. 

Smiles that make wrinkles and not 
dimples, 84. 

Smith, Isaac, poorhouse parson, 16. 

Smith, Samuel Stanhope, 166. 

Smith, Sydney, 6. 

Social distinctions, 57. 

Soil, its effect on character, 21. 

Solomon, temple of, 332. 

Sorrel, red, 22. 

Soul, man without. See Browne, Si¬ 
mon. 

Sparrow, English, 314. 

Specialists like coral insects, 78; their 
limitations, 79; their value, 82. 

Spider, the Scarabee’s favorite, 244. 

Spiritual doubts, 148. 

Spiritual pathology, 306. 

Spiritual pride, warning against, 336. 

Spontaneous generation, experiment in, 
175 et seq. 

“ Squirt,” college boy’s term, 252. 

Star-dust, 179. 

Stars, double, 73, 139, 317, 346. 

Stars, nursery legend concerning, 307. 

Stearns, Charles, of Lincoln, 14. 

Stereoscope, deceptions of, 219. 

Stethoscope, wrong end used by wise¬ 
looking doctor, 118. 

Story-writing for support, 53. 

Streets of Boston and New York, 324. 

Superfluous people, 170. 


Superiority to our fellow-creatures, sense 
of, 273. 

Superstitious fears not easily banished 

328. 

Sympathetic disposition brings unex¬ 
pected friends, 154. 

Taglioni, 95. 

Talk, its value in helping us find out 
ourselves, not other people, 2; it 
should be governed by the way in 
which others will understand it, 4; 
conditions of good talk, 45 ; philosophy 
of, 46. 

Talkers, the best are poets who never 
write verses, 94; lovers as, 95; occa¬ 
sional talkers, 266; good talkers apt 
to be bores, 301. 

Talking dynasty, 263 et seq. 

Taylor, Bayard, 325. 

Taylor, Jeremy, his tolerance 191. 

Teratology, the science of monstrosities, 
223 et seq. 

That Boy, 7 ; his method of interrupting 
a tiresome conversation, 63; his con¬ 
spiracy with Scheherezade discovered, 
236; his friend Johnny, 281. 

Theatre-goers, their stories more vivid 
than those of men with other experi¬ 
ences, 330. 

Theological education should include 
pathology and toxicology, 304. 

Theology must be studied through an¬ 
thropology, 183. 

Theology, comparative, as necessary as 
comparative anatomy, 149. 

Thinking, the epidemic of, 269. 

Thinking-cell, an egg the best form for, 
105, 106. 

Thothmes III., ring of, 111. 

Thoughts, how one is helped to get at 
one’s own, 1,2; loss of their original 
form, 2; some kinds like the blind 
fishes in the Mammoth cave, 2; some 
feed on others, 2; mediocrity often 
given them by publicity, 344. 

Tiber, 332. 

Titles, the Poet’s passion for, 274. 

Titus, arch of, 332. 

Townley, 213. 

Toxicology as part of theological educa¬ 
tion, 314. 

Transplanted ideas, 146. 

Trap set by authors to get booksellers’ 
advertisements, 302. 

Trees, grafted, 165. 

Elms, 19; Great elm on Boston 
Common, 313. 

Lombardy poplars, 19. 

Triumphs, immediate, of singers, 113. 

Ulysses, 323. 

Vernon, Fortescue, 29. 

Virgil, 312. 

Virtues of common humanity, 306. 

Vital force expended upon poem, 97, 98. 



360 


INDEX 


Vitality, 334. 

Voltaire, Jonathan Homer’s external 
resemblance to, 15; his chapel, 193. 

Ward, Gen. Artemas, 28. 

Warren, Joseph, 28. 

Washington elm, 19. 

Weak constitution and devout disposi¬ 
tion, correlation between, 303. 

Week in a French Country-House , 161. 
Whips, fascination of for youth, 273. 
White-pine Yankees, 276. 

Wife, Bishop Hall on election of a, 
304. 

Williams, Colonel Elisha, 331. 
Wind-clouds and Star-drifts , 144, 172, 
197, 230, 258, 285. 

Wine, famous vintages of, 102. 
Winthrop, John, 224. 

Winthrop, Prof. James, 224. 

Wisdom leaks into books, 302. 
Witchcraft, Salem, 326. 

Woman’s rights, 246. 

Women, as listeners, 90 ; their desire to 
please, 91; in social life, 94; their 


compassion for suffering, 141; need 
faith more than men, 186; power of 
adapting themselves to changing stand¬ 
ards, 189 ; their belief in the love-cure, 
272. 

Worcester’s dictionary used instead of 
the Bible to take oath upon, 8. 

Words, certain short ones like Japanese 
toys, 89. 

Writers like lovers, 35. 

Writing, drudgery of, 299. 

Wyman, Dr. Jeffries, 178. 

Yankees, pitch-pine and white-pine, 276. 

Young Astronomer, devotion to his work, 
59 ; his loneliness, 141 ; his poem, 144, 
172, 197, 230, 258, 285; gives Sche- 
herezade astronomy lessons, 234 el 
seq. ; changes his seat at the table, 235; 
tells Scheherezade the story of Andro¬ 
meda, 317. 

Young Girl. See Scheherezade. 

“ Young surgeon, old physician,” 119. 

Zend Avesta, quotation from, 326. 













































































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